


I Do Not Think That They Will Sing To Me

by wraithwitch



Series: Constellations [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ancient Egypt, Angels, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Demons, Did I Mention Angst?, Drunk Crowley (Good Omens), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen or Pre-Slash, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, I use Capital Letters like a 14th C scribe with sleep deprivation, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Insanity, M/M, Most of the narration should be read in the Voice of God, Pining, Poem: The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Slow Burn, These Idiots, Wings, bedlam - Freeform, curling up together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2020-05-16 18:59:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 25,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19324150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wraithwitch/pseuds/wraithwitch
Summary: Angels and Demons cannot heal one another without a great deal of pain, the threat of madness, and the possibility of all out destruction."Anyone hanging out with Crowley for any length of time would immediately surmise three things. Firstly, that whilst he talked a good game of making himself out to be A Fantastically Evil Bastard, he really wasn’t. The best he achieved was being petty and overly dramatic. Secondly, that whilst Crowley loftily told himself he had Pride, it was clear that when it came to the Angel he barely had Dignity. Thirdly, that Crowley had a Very Complicated Relationship with his best friend that probably required counseling..."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from a poem by T.S. Eliot called 'The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock'. All you really need to know if you haven't read it is its themes are love, desire, fear and inaction.

Aziraphale can barely stand to look at him when he finds him.

Crowley, magnificent, sarcastic, _swaggering_ Crowley, who dresses fastidiously but likes to make it look effortless. Who walks like his hips are double-jointed, and says incomprehensible and irritating things into phones like, _‘I’ll get across that, great we’re in the same head space - let’s do lunch - ciao.’_ Crowley with his blood-dark copper hair, his ridiculous cheekbones, and his frankly appalling habit of wearing sunglasses. Whilst driving. At night. In the rain. At 100mph.

That Crowley is a force of nature in tight jeans and snakeskin boots - like a tornado playing dress-up in a human’s skin.

This - this Crowley is - is -

Aziraphale swallows, trying to suppress a nausea deep in his soul born of fear. This Crowley is too still - too silent. And - oh - his _wings_ …

There is a sigil on the floor. To the casual occultist, it would have looked to be from the Lesser Key of Solomon. But Aziraphale has books - many, many rare books - and can see immediately there are subtle differences. And, as is often said, the Devil is in the details.

The sigils are not the same as in his book - they are inverted - which is just as well. Even aligned towards the wrong Principalities, Aziraphale feels his wings give a flutter, a twitch, like a startled bird. Crowley would have had no chance at all. His wings would have been forced to manifest, all but ripped from his back in a violent moment of Unfurling. Once open, the wings would have been stretched monstrously taught, and Crowley himself subjugated and pressed upon: compelled by the Word and the Name.

Aziraphale sees it, the Name, and his heart grows heavy and struggles to rise out of its unhappiness. Crowley hadn’t used that name in millennia - what _right_ had they to invoke it?

The answer came immediately: Heaven never forgets a promise, nor Hell a slight. And what has Crowley been doing all these centuries if not slighting them?

Aziraphale offers a small prayer of thanks to the Almighty that he is an Angel and can perform Miracles, Blessed and Fearsome to behold. Were he a mere Human, for example, he wouldn’t have known what to do.

 _If you were a ‘mere’ human,_ a sibilant and sarcastic little voice at the back of his head hisses, _you wouldn’t be in this situation. Nor would I. I’d be blissfully unaware, and doing something like… like… posting selfies on the internet. Or cats. The selfies were me - I made that a Thing! Pasht-Sekhmet did the cats though…_

The voice seems to recede from Aziraphale’s mind, growing faint. Or perhaps it had never been there at all, just an echo of memory and six millennia of familiarity. Aziraphale shakes his head, scolding himself. It’s time to act. But given the speed and fervour he’s employed to find Crowley, his legs are surprisingly reluctant to travers the final 13 bloody feet, and enter within the radius of that dark and broken wingspan. 

* * *

Someone very wise once said that Humans ought not ask if they had a Soul. They _were_ a Soul. What they _had,_ was a body. The same is not entirely true of Angels (Pristine, Fallen, or otherwise). Angels are God’s thoughts given form. Their name - derived from _Anglos_ in the Greek - means ‘Messenger’.

From this, Medieval scholars concluded that Angels have no Free Will.

But without Free Will, how can there have ever been Rebellion in Heaven?

Impossible.

Much like their futile attempts at divining the Earth’s conception, the scholars ballsed that theory up.

Thoughts come from Ideas - which are indeed immortal - but they’re also tricky bastards. Who can honestly say that every Idea they’ve had has stayed true to its original form? Ideas have always had a life of their own - especially when sprung from the mind of a Supreme and Ineffable Being.

This is to say, that whilst Humans were Souls who had bodies and Angels were Souls who occasionally were _issued_ bodies, the Souls were running on very different software - so were Demons when it came to it. If it helps (trust me, it doesn’t) think of it as Windows vs Mac vs Linnux. (I leave you to decide which is which - because as I said, it doesn’t help.)

* * *

Crowley is not in a coma, although his Corporeal Form is in something very near. Crowley’s Soul had been made to hiss and spit and bleed apart in pain like hot fat on a skillet. But now at last he is coming back to himself: all the little contrary shining beads rolling together and coalescing like mercury.

He doesn’t seem to be anywhere in particular; he feels like an out of sorts cloud, alone in an empty sky. With a little more concentration, the poetry evaporates leaving awareness in its wake: he feels cloud-like because he is hanging on to his Corporeal Form by no more than a few, meagre threads.

Crowley dithers. He doesn’t like dithering; procrastinating is fine, that’s practically Sloth, but dithering displays a lack of Will. Crowley has always prided himself on having far more Will and Imagination than his fellow Demons. So, rather than continue to dither, Crowley uses his Will - Will that can drive a flaming Bentley round the M25 - and his Imagination - that can Imagine said flaming Bentley is _his_ fucking car and will do what _he_ says (which is primarily _‘don’t explode!!!’_ because the Bentley has been his for a long time and can do rather a lot on autopilot) to put himself firmly back within the flesh, bones, blood and sinews of his Corporeal Form.

His action is what’s technically termed as a Calculated Risk. Unfortunately, Crowley has never bothered to study Mathematics, so his calculation is a poor one.

It feels like diving in slow motion into a vast lake; if that lake has been thinly iced over and contains liquid pain. He convulses, not immediately certain which way is up: and then as gravity presses down upon all his wounds, and he inhales agony deep into his lungs, he very much wishes he hadn’t bothered to find out. However wishes take Will, and Crowley’s store seems to have run dry. (Even his endless back-up store of Pure Bastard Spite is empty.)

In a begrudging way, Crowley begins to panic.


	2. Chapter 2

Miracles are three a penny - if one is an Angel. They are the simplest of things for an Angel to perform, along with Love and Flight. (Holiness isn’t so much performed as naturally inhabited, like a very expensive coat.)

In the old days, the size of a Miracle was immaterial. (Water into wine? Ensure there’s flour and oil for bread? Heal the sick? Bring someone back from the dead? Plague Egypt? Raze Sodom and Gomorrah?) All was much for muchness in the scope of Heaven’s many _(many)_ Eyes.

But the Archangels wanted things to be more organized and - conveniently - someone had just invented Bureaucracy. (Both Heaven and Hell claimed to have come up with it first, but the Patent is, in fact, held by the Chinese.) So Miracles were categorised: they now were ranked, and required Celestial paperwork.

(Demons had something similar, although arguably Heaven’s paperwork is more strict and convoluted, which might explain why the World is in the state it so frequently is.)

The age-old office politics of Ethereal vs Occult forces is not the issue at stake however. The issue is, there is no form for Angels to attach to their reports letting Head Office know how and why they just healed a Demon. That’s because it has never previously happened in the history of the Earth, and Gabriel and the others don’t have the Imagination to think it might.

There is one other very good reason why Heaven (and indeed Hell) printed no such paper work. It never crossed their minds that anyone would ever _want_ it. Not only because Angels and Demons are hereditary enemies, but because performing miraculous healing on the Other Side _really_ Fucking Hurt and so had been quietly banned as a War Crime by the Council of Nicea in 325AD.

Aziraphale is a being of Love and Grace, and right now neither quality is being of any use at all. Worse, he is seeing Crowley without his charm, his scorn, without everything he is used to being drawn to but careful of, like a moth with an over-abundance of caution, to a particularly enticing flame... Crowley’s flame is the lowest the Angel has ever seen it.

It is not true that Angels and Demons can sense each other at all times. But it is true that they both have Auras, and that these Auras are very different from those possessed by Humans. It is therefore quite possible for say, an Angel and a Demon who have been left to their own devices (more about that later) on Earth for six millennia, to become highly attuned to the others’ Psychic Presence. To Aziraphale’s Angelic senses, Crowley was snake scales and whiskey, the smolder of an extinguished candle, the dance of sunlight through the leaves of an apple tree, and several brash yet bombastic guitar chords. It only took Aziraphale until 41AD to realise that odd mix of sensations _was_ Crowley: and after 1793, the Angel always knew - vaguely - where the Demon was.

This might seem a long time - even for Immortal Beings. I’m inclined to agree, but then, Angels are notoriously slow on the uptake. Crowley had recognised the Angel’s unique presence and known exactly where he was since Friday the 25th of November, 3003BC.

* * *

Aziraphale had knelt and gathered Crowley up in his arms before closing his eyes and miracle-ing them back to the Demon’s flat. (The Angel had never been there, but he knew where it was; and if Crowley had placed any defences around it they would currently be as low as he.)

It was simple enough to slip them, breeze-like, through the spaces in the sky. Aziraphale had once read that Arcane Spirits travelled via their own roads in the aether, called Airts. He thought it was rather lovely, and always recalled the passage in Mirandola’s _The 900 Theses_ before he did likewise. (He would have been alarmed had he known the author once challenged a drunken Demon to dance on the head of a pin and then did his best to record the results. It is lucky for Crowley he met Giovanni Pico della Mirandola well into his cups and less than a year after the Spanish Inquisition incident (he was still rather raw about that.) Had they not met, and Mirandola not written of the outcome, Aziraphale would never have thought to do such an odd thing as travelling through the spaces between electrons. It is also extremely lucky for Crowley that an Angel traveling across England by Airt is a swifter and more stately occurrence than a Demon jumping down a telephone line.

Aziraphale lands - much to his relief - on Crowley’s bed, sunny side up. That is to say, Aziraphale is flattened into the mattress, still holding Crowley who lands sprawled across him, his poor wings thankfully uppermost in the equation.

For a moment Aziraphale’s hands reach out to hold the Fallen Angel and pull him closer: as if the very circle of his arms can deny the pain further purchase upon Crowley, and heal the torments that have come to pass.

But that is a fiction: their past has always been pain twinned with friendship; a horrible itchy understanding that they - against Infinite Odds - prefer one another to the company they are meant to keep.

 _And how much worse,_ an annoyed and sibilant whisper at the back of his head mutters, _do you think it is for me? You don’t like The Sound of Music or all those Celestial Harmonies - don’t blame you._ The snake-scale voice, so dry and soft, turns peevish. _But how the fuck do you think I feel?_ _I went to Hell…_ Now it sounds disappointed - whether with its life choices or that Heaven has the better view (office-wise) Aziraphale can’t tell.

He scowls at himself: he’s procrastinating, hoping Crowley will tell him what to do. Hoping Crowley will give him Permission - or Forgiveness. But Crowley will not, because Crowley is busy dying. Aziraphale has no other choice than to gently - awkwardly - wriggle his way from under Crowley’s slender but lanky weight, and off of the bed.

* * *

When an Angel - or a Demon should they feel so contrary - heals an earthly being, it is the simplest of matters. A look, a gesture, a word, any of these will suffice to perform the Miracle. The Miracle itself is a beatific and painless thing (yes, even the Demonic ones, it’s why they don’t tend to do them).

The Mortal Frame is injured, the Mortal Frame is healed.

It’s an Ineffable Act, not a crude surgery: it is without pain - indeed, often without knowledge on behalf of the recipient.

Angels (even Fallen ones) manage this because they are made of rawer Universal Matter. They were the First. Humans were the Second. There are many differences and discrepancies - but don’t see it as Evolution, see it more as the difference between a First Folio and a Quarto Edition. And if you don’t know about that, Aziraphale will be more than happy to fill you in. Although not right now, as he is considering something that hasn’t been done since the Fall (the Glorious Revolution, the Grand Fuck Up, or whatever you wish to call it.)

In fact he's contemplating a War Crime: he is contemplating how he might save a Demon’s life.

* * *

Aziraphale has lain Crowley out, stomach down and face to the side on the bed, his arms and wings at unhappy angles. The right wing and arm are battered but whole; such cannot be said for the left. There are wounds across Crowley’s lower back - horrible in their own way but nowhere near as distressing to Aziraphale’s eyes as the damage that has been cruelly clawed out across Crowley’s left shoulder and wing.  The scapula is pared to the bone, the wing broken into mismatched tatters like a badly rendered jigsaw puzzle.

Aziraphale is sitting rather uncomfortably across Crowley’s thighs because that is how he can most easily minister to the Demon’s wing. He tries to settle and ready himself, rubbings his hands together unhappily. He’s doing the right thing, he’s sure of it. Mostly sure. Partially sure. In the vicinity of sure. He is in fact - and this surprises no one but himself - Not Sure At All.


	3. Chapter 3

Poets - the Romantics especially - were very good at describing pain. Under Keats, for example, the pain of a set of lungs - hollowed to blood and scars by Consumption until there’s no breath left - was rendered ethereal. _(‘Darking I listen: and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death…’)_ And whilst Crowley appreciates the ongoing Human imagination and invention of the whole thing, he doesn’t appreciate the artistry as Aziraphale might. Some sort of Beauty-Is-Suffering matrix that had Burnt out of him when he Fell. He didn’t like poetry about death. It just reminded him of Death in general - Plague - the Inquisition - fucking _Islington_ and his drowned Island - all the bad things that had come once the Garden had gone.

Crowley misses the Garden. He’ll never admit it to anyone, but the time he spent ‘casing the joint’ before actually causing mischief was very dear to him. It is why he has houseplants - and why he can never forgive them for not being Perfect.

“GROW BETTER!” he screams at them, because he cannot make them Eden again, and he hates that. It hurts - like a leaf-spot or a patch of missing scales. An aching loss. Crowley doesn’t like to be reminded of his losses.

What he is reminded of now, suddenly - brutally - is pain. A poet might call it the pain of Falling, but Crowley knows better. That Celestial pain was a chilling and sudden loss of being Denied, of being shut out and cut off. It’s not so much that you are being put out in the street with a suitcase or two of possessions, more that you and your suitcases are being booted off a cosmic waterfall into the abyss of forever, as the door is slammed shut and the locks are changed behind you. It is cold and nearly endless and leaves a bitter taste in your mouth for centuries to come.

This pain in comparison is startlingly Human: this is the pain of a body that has been misused and cruelly broken. This is the pain of a body that ought to be dead were it not for the stubborn presence of an ancient Demon within it, curled, snake-tight and miserable. It’s _bad._ And then comes the pain of a Demonically possessed body being healed by an Angel.

And that is so much worse.

* * *

Angels and Demons have Original Forms: Crowley’s was Serpens and Aziraphale’s was Aquarius, in a manner of speaking (but both had added eyes, flames, and wings along with various other Eldritch qualities.) They were like stars, but beyond your understanding.

They have Human forms, when given a body to incorporate or attending to Earthly Matters. Left to their own devices (I did mention they had those) Angels have a penchant for wings. The Fallen, under Lucifer’s direction, cast them off, as if that could free them from the memory of Heaven. Yet one of that number did not discard his wings: he kept them - and in very good condition too. (He liked them. They were black and glossy and he thought they looked Cool.) He has never been forgiven - but it’s Hell after all - so you shouldn’t be surprised.

* * *

Crowley thinks he has understood the hurts - catalogued them - and come to terms with them: insofar as he is beaten, soon will sign a treaty and be utterly subjugated by them. He doesn’t want to - that will send him back to Hell for a start. Now he is _persona non grata_ , his picture and true name are, he’s sure, sent round in all the hourly memos as Hell’s Most Wanted Traitor.

Whilst, quietly - very quietly - Crowley will admit he isn’t blameless, he still has no idea in the name of all fucking Creation what he’s done to deserve _this_.

He claws and scrabbles for Will, for strength, for any scrap of fight. There is some sort of weight on his thighs pinning him down and an unending bright-white-bone-crunching agony running though his left side - his wing worst of all. Hands press there and he can feel bone fragments shift, atom by torturous atom, and he screams.

* * *

It is not that Aziraphale does not wish or indeed is incapable of healing Crowley.

It is that in one way, Angels and Demons are like two ends of a magnet drawing upon the iron of Humanity’s destiny… But when it comes to healing between Angelic and Demonic forces, those powers starkly repel: that was learnt in the First War (or the Glorious Revolution, as Hell calls it). Some Heavenly friends repented and laid down their swords: ideologies shattered once the blood began to flow, compassion blooming from the slaughter. But it was too late. The Pure and the Fallen could not heal one another even if they wished to: the best they achieved was pain, or insanity.

* * *

There is an Angel who is not an Angel at all, and whose Dominion is Madness: Our Lady of Bedlam. The Almighty created her from Pity and Succor. She is a fortress - a Sanctuary - holding both broken Angels and Demons within her grasp, sparing Reality from the terror of their existence.

For the Heavenly Host, she is akin to the Nameless Thing Under The Bed that has a penchant for grabbing stray ankles.

* * *

There is a piercing light - neither Angelic nor Demonic: it is a light comprised of Hope and Loss and every Mirror that has ever Shattered.

The Angel ceases trying to minister to Crowley; in turn the Demon’s screams stop abruptly and his body goes limp.

The Principality of the Eastern Gate has never met her, this Creation, but he has heard stories. He owns a bookshop filled with rare books - he _collects_ books for Heaven’s sake - not just bibles and prophecies and Oscar Wilde but many other prized tomes too. He knows _all_ the stories.

He knows of Bedlam’s namesake: a hospital founded by a London Alderman in 1247 to minister to the sick. And its downfall too, into a cruel and fetid madhouse any could walk though to point or laugh at the afflicted for tuppence a time. Bedlam’s very existence warps Reality. (But that is to be expected for a Primordial Force woven from Light and Insanity, created to house Angels too broken to be let loose on Creation.) He wonders why she’s here, and what it will take to make her leave so his heart can stop trying to leap out of his own throat and run away, shrieking as it goes.

“Oh _fuck,”_ Aziraphale murmurs, unable to stop himself, and hoping the Lady doesn’t hear. His wings manifest instinctually, vast and snowy white: he looks like a predator defending its kill from a slightly larger predator. And that unhappy thought has - make no mistake - occurred to him.

Bedlam manifests neatly in Crowley’s flat: she wears a dark blue gown of Spitalfield’s silk from the 1750s. Her hair is long and bone white, and her eyes are pure sun-fire. She perches on a side-table and nonchalantly crosses her arms.

Aziraphale curls his wings tighter around Crowley and almost manages a glare.

She gives a little huff of laughter. “You’re like a cat with a bottle-brush tail.”

He is not soothed; his feathers all but bristle. “Why are you here?” he asks wretchedly.

She smiles: the expression is crooked and peculiar. “Thought you might like some advice…” She glances at his wings and decides that whilst silence isn’t consent, it’s the only answer she’ll get. “Humans heal easy. Angels?” She shakes her head. “Not so much.”

“He’s not an _Angel,”_ Aziraphale counters automatically, but the statement wilts and Bedlam rides clean over it.

“They say there’s no in-between: just Heaven and Hell in the end. But that’s not all there is. There’s a space. For when the pain’s too much. Somewhere to go… Sanctuary.”

Aziraphale’s brow furrows and his voice rises in both pitch and volume. _“Don’t speak to me of your sanctuary!_ Bethlem Hospital was an atrocity of unspeakable…”

“IT WAS,” the pale haired young woman admits in a voice of white hot stars and burning firmament, “AND NOW IT IS UNDER MY RULE AND PROTECTION.” She pulls herself together and manages in a lesser voice, “And it shall never fall to such barbarism again.” She sounds acutely bitter, but very resolute.

Aziraphale suddenly feels too tired for this: he has searched for Crowley, rescued him, and is healing him - how many further trials need there be?

Bedlam, wearing the skin of a young lady with white hair, gold eyes, no patience, and a fine silk dress, quits leaning against the side-table and hops up to sit cross-legged in one fluid motion on the furthest corner of the bed.

Aziraphale very much wishes he could hiss as Crowley no doubt would. “Go _away!”_ Even to his ears, his voice sounds more peevish than commanding.

She sighs. “What you’re doing… The pain will likely kill him. Or send him mad.” She looks squarely at the Angel, not just his corporeal being, but his Original Form beyond that. One set of golden eyes calmly stares at countless others, and hers Do Not Blink First. “IF HE’S MAD, HE’S MINE.”

Aziraphale’s face twists and the many Eyes of his Original Form glower and blink, wishing to rid themselves of an impulse to shed tears.

“You don’t understand,” she says quietly with vexed compassion. “Don’t you remember? Were you not _there_ for Heaven’s War?”

“I - I…”Aziriphale ought to have been commanding a company of Angelic forces during the Rebellion, but he had been distracted by a particularly fascinating scroll he’d found in Heaven’s Library, pertaining to the fact that the Almighty was planning on imbuing some of Her next Creations with the gift of Prophecy… “Errrr…” he finishes lamely.

“I think you must have forgot on purpose,” she says, sounding contemptuous. “Either that, or you really are a bastard.”

“I say, look here!”

“It’s _Forbidden_. Nicea Council. Like the Geneva Convention,” she adds helpfully, wondering if this Angel is especially slow.

There is something about her voice he can’t read. She and Crowley are similar in that regard: there is something unfathomable about them. Heavenly doctrine warns him to Beware and label such things as Unholy Influences. But, he thinks, he is surely past such Propaganda now. His arms at some point during the conversation have latched around the unconscious Demon. _“Why_ is it forbidden?”

“Hurts.”

He doesn’t like that answer. It’s brutally simple. “But surely, pain is only…”

 _“HURTS,”_ she reiterates, and the Angel is silenced. “It’s a Cruel and Unusual Punishment. That’s what they decided,” she says. “It was agreed by all there - both sides.”

“Both sides…? _Both_ sides tried… to heal…? To stop…? To…”

She looks into the middle distance at nothing at all, as if scrolling through an index, trying to remember. Bedlam was Created after the Fall, but all of her charges were there. She blinks. “Not sure,” she shrugs. “Can only tell you what I Know.” There is an undercurrent to her words, hinting strongly that some others (the Heavenly and Hellish Bureaucracies perhaps) might be saying a great deal about which they Knew very little.

With an effort she gets up, drawing her power to her as she stands on the very outer-most molecule of the bed. She is a phosphor-white star in vaguely human and female form, but far too bright to look upon. “HE IS BROKEN. I SHALL TAKE HIM.”

_“No!”_

The star dims. It seems to regard Aziraphale; tries to understand him. Suddenly the power of it is folded away from the Earthly Plane, packed neatly into Another Dimension, much as an Angel’s (and in one case, a Demon’s) wings can be. “Hasn’t he been through enough?” the woman in the blue silk dress asks.

Aziriphale cannot bring himself to answer, but his wings bristle once more and seek to shield the Demon from her sight. There is Silence. The Silence stretches and Aziraphale desperately wishes that Crowley were conscious, if only to break it.

 _Is that all I am?_ A little hiss prods at the back of his mind. _Just - what? A distraction - a chatterbox to annoy the-_

 _Shut up, Crowley!_ Aziraphale thinks, miserable, because that is not what he meant. Not what he meant at all.

Bedlam’s eyebrows are drawn at quizzical angles into a frown. “You wish to continue healing him,” she says at last. “Even knowing what it might do?” Her inflection has changed little, but the Angel is aware that it’s a question.

He bows his head. If Crowley discorporates, he’ll return to Hell - and they were the ones to do this to him in the first place! Logically, keeping him on Earth was the Right thing to do. Thwarting Hell and all that. But Aziraphale knows that isn’t the heart of it. The real truth - solid but strange - is that he cannot bear to loose his best friend, and so will inflict agonies upon him for a chance, however slight, to keep him.

Aziraphale knows now that what he said after Gabriel's Apocalypse pep-talk was wrong: he isn’t soft - he’s _selfish_. “Yes,” he manages, very quietly.

Bedlam looks at him and it’s not the look he expects as it holds none of Heaven’s absolutes, only sadness. “Leave you to it then,” she says. "I'll come back for him when you're done."

“Wait!”

She does, between one step and the next, her toes resting on nothing but air, her hair tangling across her shoulder but failing to mask the disappointment in her eyes.

“You - you said might! You said ‘what it _might_ do’.” Aziraphale warmed to the question feeling it was the right one to ask. “You know it hurts and it has broken some in the past - but did it break them all?”

She blinks, a slow lidding of her golden eyes, and it is clear she has turned inwards again, asking questions of those within her Keeping. Her head suddenly tips to the side alarmingly as if her neck’s been snapped, and a strange grin suffuses her features. “I don’t Know,” she says, and sounds ridiculously pleased about it.

The grin alarms him: it’s a crescent moon of utter _joyous_ madness. (Not to mention her teeth look uncomfortably small and very sharp.)

“I SHALL GIVE YOU MY BLESSING,” she says as she flicks her hand towards them both, something Amused, Feral, and Infinite, shining from the blank and pupil-less gold of her eyes. She vanishes from Earth like a spent firework: leaving a suggestion of sparks, powder, and the faintest of afterimages upon Aziraphale’s retina.

The Angel blinks, and warmth runs in rivulets down his cheeks. He is about to be not just selfish, but supremely so, and no Blessing can stop that from tearing him apart.

* * *

The pity of the matter is that whilst Angels are Beings of Love, they mostly know precious little about it. Bedlam on the other hand is a Vessel of Insanity, which means two things. Firstly, that by virtue of being madder than a bag of corkscrews, she has Imagination - even more so than Crowley - which in itself is impressive. And Secondly, that she keeps within her the Essence of 777,777 of those who had once been members of the Heavenly Host. Which, all added up, means she knows quite a lot about Love. And is fantastically good at pub quizzes and crosswords.

Had Aziraphale asked Bedlam, she would have told him Love was often selfish. Oh, it’s still great and grand and the like - but it can be petty too. Love is just So Much. So many Different Things. It gets twisted sometimes, or made small. But equally it can be surprising - indeed, amazing. It is why Humanity writes so many songs about Love: because Love can be both a Many Splendid and a Many Splintered thing. It is in fact the definition of Ineffable, when one gets down to it.

But Aziraphale hadn’t asked Bedlam for her opinion because his heart hurt too much. And so his brain is none the wiser.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Islington and his drowned Island' is a reference to both Neverwhere and Atlantis - apparently Crowley is not a fan.


	4. Chapter 4

To say that Crowley is having a bad day is an understatement akin to describing the surface of the sun as ‘warm-ish’ and absolute zero ‘a tad nippy’.

He has, for a brief space, been somewhere dark and peaceful. Usually he would have found such a place dull, but his life has been extremely hectic and unpleasant of late and he really feels he deserves a holiday and a bit of a lie down, thanks.

His reprieve is far shorter than he’d like; but then if he’s honest with himself, it’s a bit naïve to expect the Universe to leave him the fuck alone for the next millennia whilst he concentrates on not shivering any more.

The pain hits like a meteor strike to his soul: too vast and burning for him to truly comprehend. He is pressed down by it, burnt by it - annihilated by it - can feel himself slowly being Obliterated by it. Crowley doesn’t think he has the strength to scream. And then that atom-rearranging agony returns to his mauled wing, and Crowley discovers he can still scream after all.

He scrabbles franticly within himself, searching for some corner where the pain can’t reach. But in the landscape of his soul, the sky is not just burning but falling, and no matter how far he runs there is no escaping that.

He tries very hard to Imagine that he isn’t in excruciating pain, and is nearly successful for a moment. He tries again and feels something of him unravel and evaporate. Again he tries, then again, burning something within himself in the process. He isn’t sure what he’s using to fuel his Imagination and doesn’t give a damn either way, just so long as it lessens the agony.

He’s becoming reckless now, Imagining with a vengeance as some small but integral part of him is consumed second by second - but they’re seconds that he doesn’t hurt so what does it matter - and then Crowley hits a wall. Not an actual wall, mind you, but a barrier: locking away the remnants of whatever he’s been blazing through. The full force of the pain is catching up with him once more and he batters himself futilely against the strange golden net that is keeping his salvation out of reach.

 _Let me in! This is_ my  _fucking soul and I demand precedence!_

For a second, Crowley can see a star that inexplicably looks like a young woman with white hair. She shakes her head at him, and the Demon knows that This - whatever This is - is her doing.

 _You blessed bitch!_ Crowley howls at her before the pain drowns him again.

* * *

Crowley is being dragged towards consciousness; he doesn’t like it but doesn’t seem able to do anything about it. He awakes slowly, rather like a snake thawing out in the new light of day. Indeed Crowley does feel as if he is lying in a sunbeam. His exhausted body is pathetically grateful for the comfort, and he lets out a rasping sigh.

“Crowley?” a voice asks anxiously.

“’Ss warm.” The words are ragged. “Like th’ Garden…” The warmth intensifies, as if the sun knows of his appreciation and shines a little brighter because of it. Cowley’s battered soul basks in the sunlight, greedily drinking it up like it’s morphine. He wonders where he is, whether Aziraphale has magic-ed up a greenhouse or invented some new form of dry sauna. (Do Angels do that sort of thing? He doesn’t think so, but isn’t sure.) He had thought he was on a bed, but his brain isn’t as sharp as it usually is, and certainly isn’t paying attention, so perhaps he is outside after all… Perhaps he really is in the Garden?

With an effort he opens his eyes, lids stuttering until he finds the one lone scrap of Will he has left and forces them to open properly.

“Crowley, my dear…”

“A-azzzsiraph’l…?” It’s a slurred hiss. The next hiss is fainter. “Where’ss th’ ssun?” His tired eyes show him the Angel leaning over him in the foreground of the sleek modernity of his flat. He’s stretched out on his stomach in his own bed, and it is - unless he’s hallucinating wildly - quite unequivocally nighttime. The only light to enter the room comes through the windows from the ambient glow of the City of London as it sleeps with street, shop, and car lights gently illuminating the darkness. He feels a twist of confusion that very much wants to transform into panic. “Where’s th’ ssssun?” he demands again. Even the phantom warmth he had taken for sunlight seems to be cooling, the heat pulling away from him and becoming miserly - which Crowley thinks is most unfair of it. Rude, in fact.

“The sun is where it always is,” Aziaphale placates. “In the sky. It just happens to be eleven o’clock at night…”

“Nooo,” Crowley frets, annoyed as well as fractious. “Wass ssunlight…”

The Angel places a concerned palm on the Demon’s forehead, perhaps believing that Madness - like fever - actually overheats the body as much as it does the mind.

Crowley makes an indignant noise. He tries to shake off the offending hand and rise.

“You mustn’t…”

The last word had been going to be ‘move’, something Crowley finds out for himself as his whole back and left wing flare into dotted spikes of agony. He collapses with a choked sob, his breath coming in shocked gasps as the pain continues to roll over him, thundering down his nerves and earthing in his bones.

“T-there are some lesser wounds on your back I didn’t heal,” the Angel explains. “And your wing, well, I - I…” Aziraphale doesn’t wish to remember let alone articulate how broken it had been in comparison to its current state. “I’m so sorry dear boy, I…” _I thought I was killing you!_ Is what Aziraphale wishes to say. But he can’t, because certain concepts are too monstrous for an Angel to voice, even one as slow on the uptake as this Foolish Principality. So, “It was, ah, all I could manage I’m afraid,” is what he says instead. “I was rather hoping, after a nap and perhaps some tea, that you might see to the rest yourself?”

The pain is fading, sinking into a background throb of low-grade unpleasantness which Crowley can’t ignore exactly, but he can certainly bear more easily than the look of anguish on his angel’s face. “Don’t worry ‘bout it,” he says.

“You’re _hurt.”_ Aziraphale points out. “And I…”

“It alwayss hurtss.” His words slur, “Alwaysss hass, A-As-aazss - ssii- fell,” he manages.

Something within the Angel breaks. He thinks it might be Faith. (It isn’t; it’s Hope. But the two are easily confused.)

“This is _not_ you!” Aziraphale is trying not to panic and doing a supremely bad job. He has never experienced madness nor encountered it, but his bookshop holds a long shelf of Gothic Literature that’s given him some ideas.

Gothic Literature is not a reliable resource for the effects of insanity upon an individual by anyone’s standard. But what is a reliable metric by the Angel’s standard, is that Crowley is not behaving like Crowley. The hissing is a bad sign for a start, as are his eyes, which are fully serpentine. Aziraphale, remembering Bedlam’s warnings, begins panicking in earnest.

Crowley’s spirit feels thin and discombobulated to the Angel’s senses. He doesn’t know if this is the start of the Demon’s madness, all he knows is he doesn’t like Crowley being so un-Crowley-like and muttering about the sun when it’s the middle of the night. Our Lady of Bedlam would know, but if he summoned her she might take Crowley away, subsuming his essence into Sanctuary. What is an Angel to do? Could he Miracle away insanity? Should he make tea - a hot toddy - a Lemsip? He doesn’t know - he doesn’t _know_... He feels a sudden sad kinship for Eliot’s J Alfred Prufrock - and wonders, as a mental side note, if that’s where Crowley stole the ‘J’ from. It would mean that the Demon had actually  _read_ Eliot, which seemed a bit of a stretch. The words rise, unbidden, in his mind.

_‘Let us go then, you and I When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table…’_

“I love you, y’know,” Crowley says in a very small voice. His eyes are closed: proof if ever there was proof needed that he’s not entirely there, cognitively speaking.

“Oh,” says Aziraphale, not wanting to kick the Demon’s pride when it’s low enough already.

“Loved you.. ss.. since… tha’ sstupid Ssword,” Crowley hisses faintly, and then there is silence.

The Angel blinks, turns his head away and blinks again, feeling unequal to the task of dealing with this. Either Crowley is mad, or Crowley (swanky, sarcastic, Crowley) is not only capable of Love but has felt it. For him. Since Eden. The instinct rises in him to accuse the Demon of lying, but he doubts even the wily old Serpent has it in him to do so in that sorry state. No; Crowley had just done something more terrible by far. He’d told the truth.

Aziraphale gently adjusts the bedclothes, careful not to jostle Crowley’s wings but cocooning him in as much duvet as possible. (Serpents are cold blooded after all.)

Hesitantly, he reaches down to smooth back the sweat-mussed spikes of hair that have fallen over the Demon’s forehead. It takes him several minutes to realize that the rogue-coiffured-element has long since been tamed, and he is essentially just running his fingers through Crowley’s hair. He pulls back with a flicker of guilt. “I, ah, I’ll just… I’ll just sit in a chair. Nearby.” He swallows. “Keep you company.”


	5. Chapter 5

Crowley sleeps for two weeks. His Corporeal Form which has (like the Bentley) had one Careful Owner from new, does its best to heal, syphoning off wisps of Will as the Demon's reserve slowly fills back up. He wakes early on the following Friday feeling fuzzy and desperately in need of a double espresso and a bottle of Talisker to chase it down. He sits up gingerly and coughs, rubbing at his breastbone. He scowls. “Why - why does my sternum feel cracked?” His voice is scratchy from disuse.

“Shortbread biscuit?” Aziraphale asks brightly, brandishing a plate.

Crowley ignores the proffered plate and tries to stretch: he winces, blessing foully, as his shoulders and wings furiously ache and his chest begins to feel coldly hollow. “Ugh, fuck,” he growls and concentrates, Willing the pain away and Imagining that neither his Corporeal nor Incorporeal Form has any strained muscles or fractured bones. His wings shiver and then fold away with a pop like a dislocated limb being maneuvered back into a socket. Crowley grimaces and looks substantially paler than normal.

Aziraphale rises from the chair he hasn’t left for two weeks and then isn’t sure where to put himself. Too many things have happened of which Crowley may or may not be cognizant of, but Aziraphale is cognizant of all of them and it’s making him fidget. He’s wanted Crowley - his infuriating and wily Serpent - back. Now he has his wish he doesn’t know what to do. “Do you, ah, that is to say, do you…”

The Demon looks at him, waiting, and then rolls his eyes. “Do I know that Hastur bound me with my Name and was set on tearing my wings off? Yeah, yeah, I’d got that.” He pauses. “Thanks.” There's hint of spite in the word, but it's gratitude none the less.

Aziraphale understands and beams. Then his smile falters as guilt claws in. Crowley surmised the Angel had rescued him but he didn’t seem to have any idea about the Healing. And there’s still the unaddressed question of madness. Not to mention (no, really - for the Love of the Almighty - don’t) what Crowley said... The Principality isn’t certain what to do. (But then Crowley shivers, and Aziraphale is perfectly certain he should Miracle a blanket to wrap around his shoulders. He does so, and the Demon gives him an odd look.) “Do you know why Duke Hastur…”

Crowley snorts. “It’s Hell, angel - they don’t need a reason. Punishing the Wicked is practically their mission statement.”

“But you’re not…!”

The Demon cuts him off. “Hastur’s a vengeful sod.”

“You think he acted alone?”

Crowley does, but he also can’t bring himself to care. He shrugs and tugs the blanket more tightly around himself.

“Do - do you think he might… try something like that again?”

The Demon considers. “How did you chase him off?”

“Oh, ah, I didn’t dear boy. There was no one there when I found you.”

“Huh,” Crowley acknowledges. If the Angel hadn’t rescued but only found him, that meant Hastur had been interrupted. Which in turn meant Hell had not approved of his actions. (Crowley is terrible at Mathematics but his Reasoning is pretty good.)

“It’s a Miracle you survived,” the Angel enthuses (because whilst his ability to calculate probability is sound, his cognitive logic lags.)

“Survived?!” Crowley spits, angry and uncertain why, other than (as previously mentioned) he has been under a Lot of Stress Recently and would like to be left alone now please. “I have survived! It’s why I’m fucking here - confussed, sscrewed up but ssstill fucking here!” His voice has not only risen but turned sibilant.

Aziraphale has mis-stepped: apparently Friendships, like electrons, have spaces in-between. He does his best to traverse the chasm. “I - I was thinking perhaps - perhaps we might go for an early lunch? The Savoy has a scrumptious menu. And it might be nice to get out...”

In six millennia, Crowley - loathe as he is to admit it - has been unable to deny his angel anything. Aziraphale has never out-right asked of course, but the requests have been there, shining bight as Hope from his eyes. For the love of Someone! Crowley - out of Pure Bastard Spite - stopped time and the rise of Satan from the Pit, all because the threat of Aziraphale not talking to him ever again was Worse.

“I’m tired, angel, I don’t wanna do lunch.”

Aziraphale’s heart lurches and his panic starts to rise again like the speedometer of the Bentley with Crowley at the wheel. But the Demon does look tired - almost defeated - and the Angel is gracious. “In that case, perhaps I should make us some cocoa? Or tea? Or… or I’m certain I saw some whisky in the kitchen…!” (He hadn’t, but he’ll Miracle up a bottle and to Hell with the paperwork.) He leaves for the kitchen, exuding a false brightness as he does so, trying not to think about wounds and words and madness.

“I’m - I’m gonna have a shower,” Crowley calls half-heartedly after him before dragging himself out of bed and across the room to the en suite. He turns the water to its hottest setting and stands beneath the scalding downpour for nearly an hour, waiting to feel better, waiting to feel like himself again but feeling nothing other than cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crowley needs a hug =(


	6. Chapter 6

Crowley's flat is very modern, and as with many overly modern things it has been pared down until there is almost nothing left of it. The windows and skylights are vast, which is just as well as the walls are grey slate and the floor polished concrete.

The overall effect is of a cool and expensive sleekness purchased by someone who is largely unburdened by material possessions and requirements, save for underfloor heating, a few choice pieces of art, and a collection of house plants that would make Kew Gardens weep bitter, bitter tears of covetousness. This doesn't mean that the flat is without its comforts: the Angel is surprised to find that the kitchen is immaculately stocked (utensils by Le Creuset, food by Fortnum's) and despite the fact the refrigerator has never been plugged in, it keeps the food perfectly.

The art - even more than the faultless kitchen - surprises Aziraphale. Of course he expected even Crowley would pick up a few nick-nacks down the millennia. (There is for example a small statue of Bast and a very fetching bronze amphora in the study.) In the corridor by the bedroom is a modern sculpture in the Classical vein depicting two angels, locked in struggle. And at the other end of the flat by the front door is the top of a marble lectern carved in the shape of an eagle. (Aziraphale thought that piece a little odd for Crowley's taste. It's also familiar somehow - where had he seen it before?)

Aziraphale remembers Hell: dark and filthy, broken and putrid and crowded, and he thinks he understands the Serpent's home decor choices a little better. Design-wise, Crowley has created a space for himself on Earth that is as far away from Hell as Aziraphale's bookshop is from the pristine emptiness of Heaven.

* * *

They are sitting on a large flint-grey sofa, that whilst un-fussy is surprisingly comfortable. Aziraphale has made a pot of Earl Grey tea and also ‘found’ a bottle of Laphroaig Legacy 1815. He pours drinks for them both when Crowley eventually emerges from the shower, dressed in his customary attire of a dark shirt, black jacket, and skinny jeans.

The Serpent still looks a little peaky but he's regained an approximation of his swagger at least. He glares at the houseplants before he sits down, as if daring them to say anything.

“It was quite an experience - going to Hell," Aziraphale says appropro of nothing, as if he hadn't been watching over his Best Friend for two weeks after saving him by almost killing him. "I - I mean, I’d never really seen a Demon...”

Crowley arches an incredulous eyebrow.

“Except for you, of course,” he corrects, not because he feels the correction to be accurate but because Crowley has a mountainous range of Pride, and Aziraphale doesn’t want to cause any landslides. “I noticed, that, ah, that is to say, you…” Aziraphale’s voice skips like a scratched gramophone record.

“Don’t dither,” Crowley admonishes with faint annoyance. “Spit it out, angel.”

“Well, in their Secondary Form, the Angelic Host have wings. And - and the Demonic Hordes don’t. Except… except for you.”

Crowley strives to look nonchalant but the expression slides off, revealing something unclear but vulnerable beneath. “I jus’ - I… it - they… they go with my jacket,” he mumbles.

Aziraphale realizes something. For all the millennia he’s spent listening to Crowley, the only time he’d Truly Listened to Crowley were those little imagined whispers in his head when the Demon was dying. Aziraphale knows now he’s committed a cardinal Sin: he has allowed himself to be taken in by the Serpent's strut and attitude. Whilst all the while unable to admit that what he’s really been Taken In By, is Crowley.

Crowley who doubts and questions and wonders: who sneers at the clean brutality of Heaven in the face of the World’s suffering. Crowley who’s idea of Evil has more in common with Shakespeare’s Puck than actual Lucifer. Crowley who thinks Humans are so entertaining - so damn _clever_. Crowley who has dozed, curled about a branch of the Tree of Knowledge, and enjoyed the sunshine. Crowley, who on his knees, stops time because even though the Sword of War is great, the threat of never being spoken to again is greater. Crowley who amongst all the Demons of Hell is funny, and beautiful, and _cares_.

The Angel is temporarily paralyzed by the enormity of all that, and swallows once or twice, trying to move past it. “The, ah, Duke Hastur for example and - and Beelzebub. They are quite putrid - and with those - those…” Some bit of him that sounds suspiciously like Crowley keeps suggesting _‘Diabolical hats?’_ and smirking. “Angels manifest wings,” he says, pulling himself together with an effort. “It’s our nature. Demons manifest their nature too and it - it’s horrid.”

Crowley sits very still and studiously looks at nothing at all, because he has already Fallen, and has nothing left but Pride.

“But - but my dear - you have your wings. And…” _Beautiful_ , Aziraphale wants to say. _You’re not only my Best Friend, but You’re The Most Beautiful Thing I’ve Ever Seen._

Crowley shifts, turning away and preparing to leave because whilst he would like to Imagine This Is Fine, even his Imagination has limits. He pats at the pockets of his jacket finding a new pair of his favourite sunglasses and hurries to put them on.

Aziraphale stands and grabs his hand. _“Please…”_ there is a raw desperation to his voice. He twitches a smile and tries to recover. “Dear boy, if you’d…” He stops, catching the dishonesty this time as his tongue forms it. He wars with himself for a moment before one side achieves moral victory without the use of firearms. He takes the sunglasses out of Crowley’s grasp and sets them down on the sofa before touching Crowley’s hands: the Angel's fingers are feather soft and flighty as beating wings. _“Don’t,”_ he implores. “You’re always hiding them. Your eyes…”

Crowley knows where this is going. His eyes are his Manifest Nature, his Punishment. It feels like his heart is being cut out and slowly devoured. Crowley wonders if he’s in Hell. He’s uncertain whether he can take comfort in the fact that Hell is a very literal place with no understanding of metaphor, because that would mean this is actually happening for real…

“Your eyes - they’re - they’re so very  _beautiful_ ,” the Angel finally manages in a desperate rush. His expression is guileless: it’s open with a sincerity that seeks to convey all the Love he has not expressed honestly since the nature of that Love began to change in 1941.

Crowley shudders and tips his head back with a stuttered breath, his eyes heavy-lidded.

“My - my dear?”

The sunlight the Serpent feels dims in alarm, but only by a fraction. “Sssun,” he breathes, blissful.

Aziraphale looks out of the window reflexively at the cloudy London skyline, feeling fear and confusion start to worm their way into his soul once more. Was this Madness? Had he broken-

A pair of skinny but surprisingly steely arms wrap around him and yank him forcefully back onto the sofa. “I - I say…!” His words stutter to silence as Crowley lies across his lap as if he has Every Right To Be There. The Demon wriggles, drawing his narrow legs up onto the sofa and trying to push his back as close to Aziraphale’s torso as possible like a cat making itself snug.

It should not be a comfort for one of the Heavenly Host to find that the Enemy Incarnate - in the form of one lanky Demon with very sharp hips - is curling up to sleep in his lap. And yet Aziraphale cannot help but smile. After a moment he tentatively reaches down and brushes his fingers through Crowley’s hair, tucking stray strands that are not stray in the least behind the curve of one ear.

Some last lines of tension within the Demon resolve: he curls a little closer and allows himself to grow heavy with sleep.

Aziriphale is none the wiser as to why, amongst all the Demonic Hordes of Hell, Crowley has wings. Has no idea why Crowley’s Fallen Nature manifests only as slit pupils and a tiny mark - a glyph or a Human tattoo - on his face and not as a -

 _Hell hat!_ sings the little voice.

\- creature, as it does for the other Demons, as if their Halos had turned base and rotten.

Lucifer was created first amongst the Host and was known to be the Almighty’s favourite. Lucifer had a beauty that was more dazzling than stars; but when he Fell, it turned monstrous. How was it that one Serpent, the Tempter to Original Sin, could remain so perfect?

“You once told me,” Aziraphale says carefully, “that you didn’t Fall. You said you ‘sauntered vaguely downwards’.”

Crowley is too tired to know why this is apparently important.

Aziraphale leans over. “Do you know where ‘saunter’ comes from?”

Crowley makes an effort to shake his head; he doesn’t give a damn but hopes Aziraphale might stay curled over him like that if he participates in the conversation.

“It’s French. People used to go on Pilgrimages to the Holy Land…”

Crowley snorts, annoyed, but doesn’t speak against what the Angel is saying.

“When people passed through the villages…” he falters a moment and Crowley wonders if the thought of crepes has tripped him, but he manages to soldier on. “In the villages, when people asked where they were going, the Pilgrims replied _‘A la sainte terre’_ \- ‘To the Holy land’. People called them _sainte-terre-eres._ Saunterers.”

Crowley rebels against the knowledge and makes a noise of disgust and distress best described as _‘Nghk’_ before curling tightly in upon himself like a snake with stomachache.

Aziraphale doesn’t understand and seeks to lay a hand upon the distraught Demon.

Crowley coils tighter before pushing himself violently out of Aziraphale's lap and onto the floor. “Don’t touch me!” It’s a hiss more than a growl but only because he doesn’t have the jaws of an apex predator, but he does - when stressed - have the tongue of a snake. _“Ssaunter - Holy Land - Hell?!”_ He draws himself up to his full height with a violent shudder. “How fucking _dare_ you,” he spits, too heart-sick to call upon his own Will and Miracle himself somewhere else because he can’t think where to go. He stalks out of the flat anyway, the door slamming behind him.

Aziraphale has no idea, practically speaking, what it feels like to Fall. But his heart does something desperate within his ribcage and a cold wash of fear settles over him as he is left with the unpleasant sensation of having been Cast Out.


	7. Chapter 7

_“One dream, one soul, one prize, one goal_  
_One golden glance of what should be_  
_(It's a kind of magic)_  
_One shaft of light that shows the way_  
_No mortal man can win this day…”_

The Bentley thought - in so much as it was capable - that the song was very appropriate, given its lyrics about rage and flames and magic and time. Had Crowley been there, he would have muttered that if this was a Not-Apocalypse reference, the quoted number of a thousand years was inaccurate and ought in actuality to be six millennia. (But to be fair, Queen is only Inevitable, not Ineffable, so shouldn’t be faulted for that.)

* * *

Crowley is the only Celestial Being (Fallen or otherwise) to own a car. He’s never got on with horses. Especially not the huge black Hell-spawned stallions Medieval Aesthetics demanded he rode, and frequently fell off of. He was overjoyed when Humans finally came up with something better: the Automobile.

Crowley understood mechanics and invention. (Or rather he didn’t, not at all - he just understood that they neatly fulfilled a function - which is why they always functioned so well for him. The Bentley for example, when handed over to Crowley in 1933, gleaming and new, had a tank filled with petrol and a top speed of approximately 90mph if it went all out. The tank hasn’t ever been refilled because Crowley doesn’t understand that it needs to be. As an extension to this, the Bentley’s never understood either, and remains bemused by petrol stations to this day - whilst being capable of driving down Oxford Street at speeds in excess of 100mph because Crowley expects it to.)

Since the Notocalypse that destroyed and then returned the Bentley, Crowley has kept an uncharacteristic distance from his car. When in London he frequently walks or takes the bus. The Bentley is deeply hurt by this behavior and isn’t certain what its done wrong.

If Crowley were a reasonable adult capable of using his words, he would say, _‘You’re mine - I've had you from new - and I care. And I destroyed you. And I’m sorry.’_ But he is a Demon, so such words don’t come easily - or indeed, at all. He only told Aziraphale that he loved him because every defense he possessed along with every iota of Energy and Will had been stripped away first. Also he’d thought he was going to not just Discorporate Inconveniently but actually Die, and Crowley’s always been able to work to a deadline.

After the Apoca-clusterfuck, the Bentley's taken to playing music to itself when Crowley isn’t there - which is far more often than the Bentley would like.

The Bentley’s known Crowley for 86 years, which is a long time for a car, and its worried about him. It worries that Crowley might go somewhere else, or cease to be Crowley in some indefinable way - concerns it shares with an Angel, although it doesn’t know that. This is why, even when the keys aren’t in the ignition, the Bentley plays music to itself, skipping between classical tracks by Mozart and Beethoven and Queen - lots and _lots_ of Queen. (The Bentley isn’t aware of the unlikely but Universal Law of Physics which transforms all cassettes and CDs into _Queen’s Greatest Hits_ after a couple of weeks. It always assumed Crowley did it himself, so loves that album best of all.)

* * *

The Bentley is capable, in a limited capacity, of feeling happiness, sadness, anger and fear.

When Crowley leaves his flat on an overcast Friday morning without even looking at it, the Bentley experiences sadness and the smallest hum of fear, deep within the pistons of its engine. Had it been able to swap notes with Crowley’s houseplants, it would have surmised that the Demon was giving up, and would have experienced a new emotion: Terror.

The houseplants lived in a perpetual state of Terror, so wouldn’t have been very sympathetic. But that’s because the houseplants don’t know that Crowley has never actually stuffed any of their brethren down the waste disposal unit in his kitchen. He just runs the disposal, and later leaves the plant outside the door of a little old lady two floors down who keeps Siamese cats. (He tells himself that the cats will get sick from eating the houseplants or will drive the old lady to apoplexy by shitting in and knocking over said plants, so technically he’s still doing Evil, and Pasht-Sekhmet was is in no way purring at him.)

 _“This flame that burns inside of me_  
_I'm hearing secret harmonies_  
_The bell that rings inside your mind_  
_Is challenging the doors of time_  
_(It's a kind of magic)..."_

The Bentley continues to sing to itself, watching its Demon storm along the city streets in the general direction of Covent Garden as a light rain begins to fall.

 _“This rage that lasts a thousand years_  
_Will soon be, will soon be_  
_Will soon be gone…”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I have almost as many Feelings for the Bentley as Crowley does.  
> \- I said it's a 1933 model because that's the one they used whilst filming, even if it was a 1926 model in the book.  
> \- In the book, Crowley takes the offending houseplants from his flat and returns an hour later with an empty tub. ONE HOUR LATER. Throwing it in the Thames would only take 10mins! So, he obviously donates or plants them somewhere and you can't make me believe different.


	8. Chapter 8

Aziraphale finds him several hours later, not because Crowley is hidden, but because the Angel has to work up the courage to look. The Demon is in a Fleet Street pub: Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. Aziraphale winces at the name, although it’s not the name really, it’s the fact he knows that in the early days of the printing press the Middle English letter Thorn (Th) was represented by a ‘y’ and he seems to be the _only_ one to know this.

“It’s ‘thee’,” he mutters to no one in particular, “It’s ‘ _Thee_ Olde Cheshire Cheese’.”

London has many Public Houses and quite a few that are pleasingly historic. Aziraphale favours the George Inn: it’s one of the few remaining gallery pubs in London and it’s opposite Southwark Cathedral. It also serves strong porter and gloriously crisp whitebait. The Cheshire Cheese is a narrower building but it has many crooked floors and tremendous depth: slender staircases leading to basements and even vaulted cellars below.

Whilst the George is white-washed and open, the Cheshire is dark-stained oak and close corridors. Crowley is sitting alone in a room to the left of the main bar, at a table that he had previously sat at with Dickens. Today the table holds no notes from a Literary Luminary, just six bottles: four empty, one full, and one that Crowley is currently drinking from.

The Angel smoothes the velvet of his waistcoat but his face does an unhappy little pantomime that he’s trying to hide. He walks to the bar and orders a supremely expensive bottle of Château Lafite that the pub doesn’t usually stock. Then he turns and tries to square his shoulders as if walking to the Demon’s table isn’t one of the most terrifying things he’s done in six millennia.

Crowley swigs from his bottle and then thumps his head onto the table, arms outstretched, one hand still clasping the Talisker. He’s wearing his sunglasses again, although they lie a little crooked.

“Well,” the Angel offers as he sits down, “this is a fine establishment! Haven’t been here since 1666!”

“1668,” Crowley corrects from face down on the table.

“Oh! Of course,” Aziraphale concedes. “There was Goode Wife Gilly-Ham who brewed the ale!”

The Talisker dips in agreement.

“After her husband had - ah - rebuilt the premises...”

Crowley doesn’t move. The Great Fire of London (much like the Inquisition) is a sore point.

“You - you didn’t take the Bentley.”

Crowley does something with his shoulders that is meant to be a shrug.

Aziraphale tries to calculate Crowley’s sanity or lack-there-of, his mouth drawn in a tense line quite out of its normal keeping. Being epically drunk could be a sign of insanity, but then it's Crowley, and he tends to drink excessively when he's upset, which puts it in the 'Normal Behaviour (For Crowley)' column. Not driving the Bentley is however firmly in the column marked ' ~~Irrational~~ ~~Dramatic~~ Worrying And Un-Crowley-Like'.

Crowley for all his faults is sane enough to know that he shouldn’t be close to anything he loves whilst in his current mood, least he destroy it. It’s why he didn't take the Bentley, and why he doesn’t want the Angel here now.

Aziraphale fidgets with his glass of very expensive wine. There are too many things he wishes to say, but then he has always had too much to say no matter how he strives to quiet himself so he may fit more neatly beneath Heaven’s Beneficence. Truth be told, he has always struggled to be what Heaven wanted him to be. (Yet the Amighty made and placed him, and the Almighty doesn’t make mistakes. Which is marvellously reassuring, in theory, except how is he here? How had he helped avert Armageddon then gone on to heal a Demon and finally now is sitting in a Public House in London across from his oldest friend who said he loved him but probably hates him. What sort of blessed Plan is that? He waits to hear the mockingly sarcastic mutter of _'Ineffable, angel...'_ in the back of his mind, but it doesn't come.)

Crowley tips an eyebrow and his head upwards. “You still here?”

“Yes, yes as a matter of fact I am.”

The Demon drinks from the bottle and returns his head to the table.

“You see, there ah, there have been a lot of things going on.” He can’t see the Demon’s expression but the bottle looks bored. “Crowley, Hastur tried to tear off your wings. The only reason he didn’t finish the job was that Hell intervened.”

The Talisker bottle now looks bored _and_ irritated.

“I - Crowley I had to Heal you!” he says as quickly as possible just to get the words out and be done with them. His voice is loud enough to carry to the main bar, but the patrons ignore it. (This is not a Miraculous Intervention; London pubs are just like that.) He wrings his hands beneath the table. “There - there really wasn’t any other choice.”

The Demon manages to drink from the bottle without raising his head or spilling whisky all over the table.

Aziraphale reaches for his wine but his fingers flutter around the stem of the glass and can’t seem to grasp it, so he returns the hand to his lap. “You - it…” his words falter and he doesn’t even know where to look any more. “Angels aren’t meant to heal Demons. It’s Forbidden.”

Crowley flops over, untangling his legs so he can straddle the chair and arch his back across the table. It looks contorted and uncomfortable but Crowley isn't paying as much attention to his vertebra as he ought and currently possesses five more than usual. He upends the rest of the whisky down his throat, then drops the empty bottle onto the floor. “Littering,” he sniggers.

“Crowley - did you hear me? I…”

“Yep - yeah - I heard you…” Still leaning awkwardly back against the table he waves his hands towards the remaining bottle of whisky and, after a few tries, manages to snag it and unscrew the top. “You’re very - whattsit - rebellious. Mm. Well done.”

Aziraphale looks distinctly unhappy. “You don’t understand,” he says in a very small voice. “I almost _destroyed_ you.”

The Demon makes a noise somewhere between drunken disbelief and amusement.

Aziraphale knew very little about the tortures of Hell, but he feels this should certainly rank among them. “This is serious Crowley! I was reprimanded!”

Crowley snorts.

“By _Bedlam.”_

Crowley makes a strangled noise. His knuckles whiten around the bottle. “Fuck - I need a drink,” he utters, sitting up and managing not to fall off his chair before taking a very serious swallow (in this case about a quarter of the bottle) of whisky. Whilst he has not heard as many stories of Bedlam as Aziraphale has, he’s heard quite enough to terrify him, thanks all the same. “H-how’d you get rid of her?” he asks, hoping his voice isn’t as wobbly as it sounds to his own ears.

Aziraphale opens and closes his mouth a few times but can’t settle on the right words.

Crowley blanches until he looks positively corpse-ish. “What did you do, angel?”

“I - ah - I - she - _she gave you her Blessing,”_ he says in a rush.

Crowley turns almost green. He can remember, if he tries, but he doesn’t want to. Soul-shattering agony and burning through some part of himself to escape it. Something like Will, like Spite, like Imagination… He feels the sudden violent stop of that wall again and the look he’d been given as he battered himself bloody trying to punch through it.

He had been burning Sanity to escape the pain, and Bedlam’s Blessing had stopped him.

“I - mh - think ‘m gonna throw up,” he mumbles, hunching over and swallowing convulsively until the nausea passes. He’s sweating and breathing hard by the time he manages to sit up straight, rearranging himself on the chair so he's facing the table again, and taking a shaky swallow from the whisky bottle. “Well,” he says hoarsely. “That happened.”

Aziraphale grabs his glass and drinks the Lafite as if it were water.

Crowley gives him a sideways look, shaken and uncertain. He's too drunk for this - he should sober up, but he doesn't want to. He has a nasty feeling sobriety will be worse since he's currently using his inebriation like a child uses a blanket to hide under.

Likewise, the Angel refills his wineglass almost to the brim, because there are still more things to be discussed and Aziraphale is certain he’ll need a great deal of alcohol if he’s to be equal to the task of broaching them.

“She - she’s not gonna come back,” Crowley says, tripping between question and statement.

Aziraphale remembers her words - _HE IS BROKEN_ \- and winces. “I, ah, I - I think that rather depends.”

Crowley’s hand tightens once more around the whisky bottle, threatening to shatter it. “On _what?”_ he demands.

The Angel looks at Crowley, desperate and lost.

“On - on what? No - on - on  _me?_ No no no no noooo!”

Aziaphale fidgets because whilst this Crowley - drunk and indifferent and scared and pissy - was _his_ Crowley, there was still the problem of the whole sun thing, not to mention (no - really _really_ \- don’t) what Crowley had said.

 _“Fuck,”_ the Demon spits with much feeling. He gets drunkenly to his feet, almost falling over as his boots catch on the chair legs. “Oi!” he shouts. “Oi, Bedlam?!” He swigs whisky because standing within sight of Satan is one thing, but calling out an Eldritch Horror who can consume his Soul and lock it away from All Creation for ever and a day is quite another.

Aziraphale stands too and tries to shush him, tries to get him to sit back down. “Crowley - my goodness - stop…”

“Why? Why the fuck should I stop? I don’t - I don’t want this hanging over my head - whatever _this_ is. If she’s gonna come for me then she can…”

For the briefest of moments - although to the Angel and the Demon it seems a very long time indeed - there is a diamond-bright eight pointed star, or possibly a young woman in a blue gown, who leans over and kisses Crowley on the cheek before vanishing.

Both the Angel and the Demon blink in the after-glare. Crowley sags back against the wall and tries to drink, but his arms don’t seem to work, so he only manages to tip the bottle haphazardly back and forth like he's shaking hands with it.

Aziraphale doesn’t know what to say next. Bedlam had refused to take Crowley to Sanctuary, which meant he wasn’t Mad which meant that his babbling about the sun had to mean _something_ not to mention -  _Loved you.. ss.. since… tha’ sstupid Ssword_ \- not to mention, well, it meant he was Sane, and that was a good thing, wasn’t it? Yes, yes of course it was, it was -  _Loved you_ \- of course it was.

Without looking, Aziraphale takes the Talisker from Crowley’s grip and drinks.

Crowley regards him in confusion from behind the shadow of his glasses, mildly impressed. “That’s new,” he mutters.


	9. Chapter 9

Aziraphale puts the bottle back on the table and exhales a long and shuddering sigh. _And how should I presume?_ he thinks. But he also thinks Prufrock is so hopelessly timid a man that peaches scare him and Aziraphale surely isn’t as bad as that. _Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each…_

Oh for Somebody’s sake! _You go too fast for me Crowley,_ he’d said and it was true; he always felt as if he was running to catch up. Crowley had gained velocity when he Fell, a faster than light speed that had stayed with him and which the Angel could never hope to match.

“I’m too fucking tired for this…”

_“Crowley!”_

“What?” He sways on his feet and looks wretched as well as drunk. “Seriously - what? Bedlam’s not gonna eat me and Hastur’s been slapped with a ruler for his little stunt.” He shrugs expressively. “So it’s all fine. No problem. _Nil problemo.”_

It tears Aziraphale’s soul apart more acutely than any of Hell’s racks could manage. He wishes Crowley would say those precious, secret words again - preferably whilst sober - so he can tell if they're True. But he knows in his heart Crowley will not, because Crowley obfuscates his feelings like he hides his eyes. Aziraphale knows it is up to him to force the words out somehow, force the moment to its crisis as Prufrock never managed to. He wonders if the exchange will go as appallingly as the 'sauntering' one when he implyed that Falling and going on a Pilgrimage were the same thing. (He hadn’t meant to imply it, but Crowley certainly seemed to have inferred something of the kind.)

The Angel reaches out and grabs Crowley’s wrist; the movement is very sudden, and not at all soft which is what, more than anything, stops Crowley in his tracks because his angel has always been so fluttery and uncertain and timid. He looks at the hand with its gold ring, locked about his wrist like a manacle and quirks an eyebrow over the top of his sunglasses.

Aziraphale doesn’t quite look at Crowley, but he doesn’t look anywhere else either; his gaze rests uncomfortably in Crowley’s general vicinity. “It’s ah, v-vitally important that you listen to me for a moment, dear boy… You - you see…”

 _Don’t dither, angel,_ the little voice at the back of his skull hisses.

Aziraphale closes his eyes - _Do I dare disturb the universe?_ \- Prufrock never had, but Aziraphale knows he must. “After I Healed you, you - you said something rather remarkable.” He swallows and continues in a quieter voice, “You, ah, said that you loved me. That, y-you had in fact done so since the end of Eden. When I gave away the Sword.”

Crowley is so still he could have been turned to stone - or salt.

“What I rather need to know, is, is if you _do_ feel that way. Or if perhaps there’s been some sort of… misunderstanding.” His words fade into uncertainty and unhappiness.

Crowley has not survived being a Demon with his humanity in tact by wearing his heart on his sleeve. Every instinct is shrieking at him to snatch his hand away and leave. Leave the Angel, the pub - leave London - fuck it, maybe leave the solar system. _Alpha Centuri is very nice this time of year,_ he thinks bitterly. But the problem is, the Angel’s regard feels like sunlight. When he smiles at Crowley, when he is pleased by anything Crowley’s done, a quality blazes out of him: to the Serpent it feels exactly like the sunlight of the Garden, when rain had yet to be invented.

He has never been able to stand it for longer than three seconds when that light dims because the Angel is unhappy. He can’t stand it now either.

He turns and sits heavily on his chair, almost missing. “It’s not a misunderstanding, angel,” he says thickly, the words pulled out of him. How can he be so smart and so dim at the same time? Didn’t he _know?_ Why did he think Crowley was always at the bookshop? Why did he think Crowley’s idea of Evil was to create Glasgow - or Selfies - or superglue loose change to the pavement? Why did he think they had lunch together or got drunk together - why did he think the threat of being Smote by the Sword of War hadn’t got him off his knees but the threat of the Angel’s Eternal Silence had?

Crowley knows - has always known - that Aziraphale doesn’t love him. Or rather he does, because he is an Angel and a Being of Light and Love and it’s practically his job description. But he doesn’t Love Crowley in the love-and-adore-and-worship manner. That would be Heresy for a start. Besides which the Serpent isn’t certain sometimes that his angel even truly likes him. _Oh - we're not friends!_ has been an oft repeated phrase. He is a Demon after all - and how many times has Aziraphale reminded him of _that_ over the centuries?

Anyone hanging out with Crowley for any length of time would immediately surmise three things. Firstly, that whilst he talked a good game of making himself out to be A Fantastically Evil Bastard, he really wasn’t. The best he achieved was being petty and overly dramatic. Secondly, that whilst Crowley loftily told himself he had Pride, it was clear that when it came to the Angel he barely had Dignity. Thirdly, that Crowley had a Very Complicated Relationship with his best friend that probably required counseling.

Crowley looks around for the whisky but his eyes are itchy: his sight blurs and doesn’t want to work behind the shadow of his glasses. He makes a frustrated sound low in his throat and is slightly surprised when Aziraphale carefully places the bottle in his hand, letting go of his wrist in the process. The Serpent doesn’t know how to feel about that - his instinct is to Panic, but he’s not sure what he’s panicking about - other than Absolutely Fucking Everything. He almost-but-not-quite drains the bottle, then sways on his chair before tipping forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “’Ss alright,” he says, studiously trying to keep his voice blank. “I won’t say it again. Promise.” He makes a funny little gesture like a salute. “Demon’s honour. _Dib-dib-dib_ an’ all that…”

Aziraphale has no idea what the Serpent’s talking about, all he knows is that Crowley looks as lost and miserable as he’s ever seen him and he seems to be trying to brush everything off with a drunken and inadvisable attempt at humour. It makes his soul ache. “Crowley - my dear,” he reaches out to take off the Demon’s glasses.

Crowley flinches violently backwards out of the way like a startled cat.

 _“I - I don’t wish to measure out my life in coffee spoons any more!”_ Aziraphale wails in desperation, his hands falling to his lap once more in defeat.

Crowley blinks the salt from his eyes, slowly draws his glasses further down his nose so he can look at Aziraphale properly, and blinks again. “Did - did you just quote  _Eliot_ at me? You did!” He gives a snigger that isn’t as contemptuous as he thinks it is. _“Eliot’s a wanker,”_ he mumbles, because he will endure total Obliteration by Holy Water before he admits to having read T. S. Eliot, much less having liked any of his stupid poems.

The Angel opens his mouth because he has Very Strong Feelings on That Matter, but for once he catches up, realizing Crowley’s game. It’s another deflection. Well. Didn’t he always say the Serpent was Wiley? “Now you’re being unkind,” he says a little huffily, “but that notwithstanding, your views on Modern Poetry are not what we’re discussing…”

Crowley goes very still again, because he knows what this is. This is the End. This is where the Sunlight Stops. This is where Aziraphale puts a stop to their Arrangement and their Friendship because he finds it insulting to be Loved (or some mockery there-of) by a Demon... He should have fucked off to Alpha Centuri when he had the chance. He would drink, or swear, or storm off, but he can’t find the energy.

There will be no more Sunlight from Eden.

He is Willing himself not to cry and it’s making his eyes feel like they’re bleeding. He tries to remember if there’s a church with a font anywhere near…

_“Crowley?”_

The Angel’s voice is as soft as his soul and Crowley cringes away because he wants this over and done with - he wants the Sunlight gone because he’ss going to sspend hiss life in fucking perpetual darknessss anyway sso what’ss the point?

The line comes unbidden: _Oh lente, lente currite, noctis equi!_ And then he laughs, because Marlowe had been a good mate at one point. Always up for a theological discussion, was Kit. The Demon wasn’t sure, when _The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus_ premiered, whether to be pleased or offended by how many of his lines had ended up in the play. Bloody playwrights; they’d plagiarise anything… He twitches as he realises Aziraphale has just left his chair to crouch on the floor and grasp both of Crowley’s hands in his. Crowley makes a small strangled noise and shivers.

“Will you forgive me?”

Crowley doesn’t answer, he’s finding it very difficult to breathe and he’s worried he might throw up because in its own unique way, this really is like Falling all over again.

Aziraphale’s understanding of Crowley’s behavior shifts like an optical illusion and the Angel gasps as - metaphorically - the vast grinning death’s head skull of their Friendship becomes two people sitting at a table over drinks. It’s a small shift but significant. A thousand expressions, a million smiles that weren’t smug or diabolical in the least (apart from that one at the Globe) come back to him and seem now to exhibit Love that is trying to masquerade as both fondness and indifference at the same time.

Crowley has Loved him and shown him every way he knows how: in every lunch offer he’s instigated, in every book-saving, theatre-supporting, or suit-cleaning Miracle he’s ever performed. In his suggestion - twice! - that they run away to the stars to escape the machinations of both Heaven and Hell. In the way he usually sits, always canted towards the Angel. In the way he stands, always orbiting Aziraphale as if the Principality is his own personal sun.

Aziraphale’s hands clutch his tighter. “You’ve, you’ve always been ahead of me, as it were. And perhaps I haven’t made the effort to catch up that I ought. But I - I’m here now.”

Crowley tries to recoil, but he’s supremely drunk and sitting in a chair so doesn’t have anywhere to go. He shakes his head. “Bedlam take me, I fucking can’t, I…”

“No!” he sounds utterly horrified.

“…Can’t deal with this.”

 _Am an attendant lord… Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous - Almost, at times, the Fool…_ Aziraphale thinks to himself sadly. He watches as Crowley vacillates between wanting to fall over, throw up or stride away. But six bottles of Talisker will slow down a Demon - even one as fast as Crowley, who only manages to twitch and sway, still sat on his chair.

The Angel has to say it - he knows he has to say it - has to say it even if it Damns him...

The Demon flinches suddenly and tries to pull his hands out of Aziraphale's grasp.

“Crowley, wait - please stop…” The Angel has a curious sensation, as if one Modernist American poet is giving him a Stern Look and as if all of Creation is holding its breath.

_Force the moment to its crisis…_

“I love you. I - I mean I’m _in_ love with you. I know I’m not meant to,” he frets, “probably not even meant to talk to you - and the Arrangement is right out! But - but I do. Love you. I - oh dear, I don’t really know how to say this… I - I always had a fondness for you. You, ah, you… you were so _different_. You were my friend. You… you listened. And… and you’re beautiful,” he mumbles because he knows he should be above such things.

Beauty has, over the centuries, come to mean a form of standard physical perfection, as if it’s synonymous for ‘very very pretty’. It’s not. Beauty comes from Character. In other words, Crowley retained his Celestial beauty because he refused to indulge in Hell’s games. He had never killed or given in to cruelty, never wished to punish Humanity with anything worse than inconvenience. That was why his halo hadn’t putrefied into a -

_Hell hat - ha!_

\- whatever it was the other Demons had, but was only a small sigil by his ear and the slitting of his pupils.

Aziraphale reaches again for Crowley’s glasses, and whilst the Demon twitches he suffers their removal, trying not to look at anything at all as the Angel puts them on the table.

The Angel has always loved the Serpent’s eyes. The Irises looked alarming at first - in the same way that Gabriel’s looked Heavenly. But the expression behind the violet of Gabriel’s eyes was harsh no matter what it gazed upon, whereas the look behind Crowley’s eyes was amused and frequently indulgent.  _Beautiful_ , he thinks again.

Crowley shudders and slumps lower in his chair like someone who’s been in intense pain and has just been issued a sedative.

Aziraphale stands and raises a tentative hand to Crowley's cheek. “My dear…”

When the Demon opens his eyes again they’re fully serpentine. He knows that what he ought to say is, _‘So Hastur’s a sod who tried to tear my wings off. You healed me. Bedlam did I-don’t-want-to-know-what ‘cos she scares the shit out of me, I said something I swore I’d never say, you were a wanker and I was an idiot - or the other way round. There was whisky. A lot of whisky. Then you said - you - you…’_ But that seems like an awful lot of words right now, so what he says, very softly and with all the joy in the world, is, “Sssunlight…”

_Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is stretched out against the sky…_

Now he’s been grasping Crowley’s hands and has touched his palm to the Demon’s cheek he doesn’t want to let go. “Let’s go home,” he says gently feeling a little surge within his heart when the Demon leans towards him, resting his shoulder against the breast of his coat. “We could, ah, curl up with some cocoa…?”

“Great idea - I’ll drive,” Crowley decides, surging to his feet and almost straight into Aziraphale. The Angel manages to lean back in time and grab the Demon who seems to have ricocheted off of his own full height and is a second away from being a tangled heap on the floor.

Crowley looks confused to find himself being steadied in Aziraphale’s arms. But that is nothing to the wide-eyed-panic of Cognitive Incomprehension expressed on his face a moment later as the Angel kisses him. It’s gentle and loving and very chaste, although whether this is because Aziraphale intended it to be platonic, or because Crowley's too stunned to open his mouth, is a matter for Debate.

Crowley is very drunk, but more intoxicating than six bottles of Talisker is the warmth of Eden exuding from his angel just for him. “How come… you… you didn’t realise?” he mumbles, leaning his forehead on Aziraphale’s and then sliding off onto his shoulder. “I-I mean, Y’n’angel. Y’ feel love natsurly - nats - natterly? All th’ time.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale looks faintly embarrassed. “I - I did sense it. Your love. It just seemed rather vast…” _And strangely desperate,_ he knows but doesn’t mention. “I thought it was for the World. You do seem to enjoy it so - the World I mean.”

Crowley scowls crookedly and tries to look at his angel. The result unbalances him and is nearly a minor disaster, were he not still held firmly within the keeping of Aziraphale’s arms. He’s very tired and still inebriated; concentrating taxes his Will. “You… you thought I loved th’ World?”

“Well - you do!” the Angel is defensive.

For reasons that he cannot explain at present, Anthony J. Crowley finds this utterly hilarious. And the reason he doesn’t know why adds to the absurdity of the situation - which apparently, Someone help him, makes it funnier. “Fuck,” he finally chokes through a grin and then struggles not to retch as some remnant of the laughter catches oddly in his throat.

Aziraphale holds one of Crowley's arms across his shoulders, and steadies the Demon against him by locking his free hand against the Demon's bony hip as if preparing for the world’s worst three-legged race. (This obstacle race is well known by drunken students everywhere: they compete as a loose team and attempt to support one another on the way back from the pub.) “Come now - let’s go home,” the Angel suggests again.


	10. Chapter 10

They stagger down the narrow alleyway towards the late lunchtime bustle of Fleet Street, Aziraphale doing his best to ensure that Crowley doesn’t walk them both into a wall: it’s like sailing a Demonic ship that has no rudder and is holed beneath the waterline through narrow straits, and they both end up with minor scrapes and bruises.

“Crowley? Don’t you think you should sober up?”

The Demon blinks; he’s wearing his sunglasses again but they are ridiculously low on his nose to the point where they’re in danger of falling off. He looks confused; he’s so drunk he’s incapable of thinking and walking at the same time, so slams to a stop to consider what the Angel asked.

He _could_ sober up. He probably _should_ , really… Something in him shies away with a little hiss, coiling more tightly around the fog of inebriation in his brain. Oh, right. If he sobers up, he might realize that the conversation they just had didn’t mean what he thinks it meant, and his existence is in fact still a disaster-zone of Unrequited Love. He nopes away from that thought with lightning speed, and giggles unconvincingly. “Naaaahhh!” he tells Aziraphale with a fractured approximation of his usual grin.

Aziraphale realizes there’s something off, but he has his hands full with one very unsteady Demon and the alleyway reeks, so he concentrates on steering them towards the main road. “I do hope there’s an omnibus,” he mutters, uncertain which omnibus might take them to Crowley’s flat or the bookshop. Neither are far, being in Mayfair and Soho respectively, but even a short walk would be a Herculean task with the Demon in his current state. Aziraphale wonders if he should perform a Miracle and have them travel by Airt…

As they emerge from the alleyway there’s the sound of an old-fashioned car horn, and the Bentley swings serenely out of afternoon traffic and to a gliding stop up on the curb. Queen’s _‘Somebody to Love’_ is playing in the car - not that the Bentley’s ever had any speakers installed.

_“…I have spent all my years in believing you_  
_But I just can't get no relief, Lord!_  
_Somebody (somebody) ooh somebody (somebody)_  
_Can anybody find me somebody to love?”_ sings the Bentley to itself.

Crowley staggers, tripping over his own surprise. “There’s my car!” he exclaims with the delight of a five year old who’s been given a kilo of Cadbury’s Chocolate Buttons. “’Ss my car!” he confides to Aziraphale in a drunken whisper, pointing.

The Angel isn’t certain whether his heart wishes to rise or sink. “So it is,” he says weakly. “Fancy that.”

Crowley leans against the Bentley’s black roof as he tries in vain to work the driver-side door. “You’re a Good Car,” he tells it, slurred but heartfelt.

The Bentley’s engine purrs with satisfaction and the door to the driver’s side opens. Crowley falls gratefully in. “Come _on_ , angel,” he mumbles as he tries to sort his legs and settles on getting them out of the way of the door first so he can close it.  Crowley’s sinking fast now and he'd far rather it was into unconsciousness than regret.

Aziraphale looks at the Bentley with consternation and a certain amount of Suspicion.

_“…Rest your weary head and let your heart decide_  
_It's so easy when you know the rules_  
_It's so easy all you have to do_  
_Is fall in love,”_ sings the Bentley, idling innocently.

Aziraphale huffs, certain that wasn’t the song that was playing previously. “Fine,” he tells it, unsure why he’s addressing the car but feeling a Rightness to his actions. “But you’d better drive. _He’s_ in no fit state…”

Crowley is in fact unconscious, wedged upright in his seat only by the gangling length of his legs and the ridiculous angle his arms are at. Aziraphale sighs again, both fondness and exasperation in the sound.

The Bentley’s engine revs demurely and the car slides them neatly back into the Fleet Street traffic, turning East towards Mayfair and Crowley’s flat.

The drive is sedate by Crowley’s standards: the Bentley keeps to a brisk 50mph as if trying to please both passengers at once. Aziraphale is not as happy as one might suppose; 50mph in daytime London traffic is just as impossible as 90mph, only this time the Demon isn’t even conscious to oversee matters. This doesn’t seem to matter though; Crowley’s personality and habits have rubbed off on the Bentley and the car knows what’s expected off it.

“Er, thank you,” Aziraphale tells the car once its parked opposite the flat and he’s struggling to haul six-foot-and-change of barely conscious Demon out of it. He thinks he is going to have to lay Crowley down on the pavement like a felled tree, because whilst he is slender he is also tall, and Aziraphale needs a hand spare to close the Bentley’s door. It transpires the Bentley is perfectly capable of closing its own door - and does so - garnering further thanks from the Angel.

Aziraphale wonders if the flat will be as accommodating on the matter of letting them in. (It isn’t, so Aziraphale Miracles the doors open and shut as he goes.)

“I wish you’d wake up,” he grumbles. “This would be easier if you’d just find your blessed keys!” The Demon in his arms twitches, but Aziraphale is mostly sure that’s an ingrained reaction to the word ‘blessed’. The Angel drags the Demon up to the sanctuary of his flat and shuts the world out behind them with a huff of relief. He then turns a critical eye towards the Crowley shaped pile of limbs on the floor. It’s funny, he thinks, but there is a serpentine echo in the shape of arms and legs, like a snake that’s got tangled. The pile moves, curling inwards, seeking warmth and safety and sleep. Aziraphale feels a pang of worry and tenderness for Crowley, something that seems to be happening with mounting frequency.

_Do you love me?_ asks the faintest sibilance in the back of his head.

“Yes,” Aziraphale says, mostly to himself (although the houseplants may have been eavesdropping) and stands a little straighter having reiterated the admission.

He’s reminded suddenly of the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t: he was possessing Madame Tracy at the time, and whilst it was better than being discorporated it was very far from ideal and he’d been feeling lowly and powerless in the face of the combined Will of both Heaven and Hell… And then the Bentley had roared up - blaring some sort of modern music with a thumping beat - whilst on fire. Crowley had emerged, casually, greeted the Angel and slither-swaggered his way to the front gate of the airbase.

_“This young man won’t let us in,”_ Aziraphale had explained. He’d meant to speak about the whole dratted business further and entreat Crowley to help, had meant to ask Crowley if he was alright because truth be told he looked bloody awful - not to mention his car was on fire...

But before he’d opened his mouth, Crowley had already leant towards him and said, _“Leave it to me,”_ in a tired, smoke-raw but utterly certain voice that knew it could Tempt stars to fall - you just fucking watch…

Aziraphale has rarely - if ever - possessed that kind of certainty, but he realizes that’s what the Demon requires of him now, so does his best. He snaps his fingers and they are transported to Crowley’s bedroom at the other end of the flat, the Demon lain out like a cooling corpse on his freshly made king-sized bed. The sheets are a bloody hue so dark they’re almost black and have a thread count higher than most people’s annual salary.

Aziraphale makes a flicking sort of gesture, and Crowley is immediately minus his boots, clothes, and sunglasses, and dressed in a pair of black silk pajamas. Another flick and the Angel is similarly attired, but his pajamas are flannel in a pale blue and white stripe. Aziraphale has never indulged in sleep the way the Demon has - much as the Demon has never indulged in food the way the Angel has. But Crowley dines with him none the less, even if he doesn’t really eat what he orders - if he orders at all. Even if it's only coffee or wine and conversation, Crowley participates - that’s the key element.

Aziraphale gives a little nod to no one in particular, then gets into bed beside Crowley before pulling the duvet up around them both and closing his eyes despite the fact it’s 3.40pm and the Angel hasn’t tried to sleep since 746BC. The Demon makes a vague stretching motion and curls closer to the Angel’s side. _Well,_ Aziraphale thinks practically with a private smile, _I should probably try to get used to that…_

* * *

Five hours later, Crowley half wakes with an idea that he is curled around a tree branch in Eden. He smiles to himself and flexes his coils around the branch, only for the tree to make an ‘oof’ noise. He blinks sleepy eyes to discover he is in bed, and that his arms and indeed one of his legs are wrapped around Aziraphale. “Er,” he says, acutely confused, embarrassed and on the verge of pulling away.

The Angel puts a hand on his shoulder, encouraging him to settle back as he was. “Less of the death-grip, if you please,” he says mildly.

“Er. Right,” says Crowley, trying to see through the fog of his own brain to understand how and why his angel was in bed with him and apparently content because that was - ~~Amazing.~~   ~~Wrong?~~   ~~Glorious.~~ ~~Crazy?~~   ~~Impossible~~. - highly unlikely.

But whilst Crowley is more than capable of being a Dumpster Fire of Bad Decisions, even he is not so stupid as to look a Gift Miracle in the Mouth. Gingerly he settles back down. It feels comfortable and safe in the way remarkably few places ever have. Crowley allows himself to relax and waits for the weight of sleep to suffuse him.

_Thiss iss nice,_ he decides. He could definitely have a little nap here, just for a few days. His angel is golden sunlight and the smell of old books and Earl Grey Tea, the sensation of feathers across fingertips, and a single pure note like a struck crystal bell. “Love you,” he murmurs on the very edge of sleep.

The sunlight intensifies and, “I love you too my dear,” Aziraphale replies with a smile.


	11. Chapter 11

It’s midmorning and they’re sitting on the sofa in Crowley’s flat. The marble-topped table in front of them is littered with croissant from Patisserie Valerie as well as espresso cups and a cafetiere of strong black coffee.

The Demon has an almost manic edge to him that the Angel can’t fathom; it's been building all morning. (Then again, Aziraphale supposes, rather a lot has happened in a very short space of time. Maybe this is how Crowley’s always regained his equilibrium - staying one step ahead?) Or perhaps it’s the subject matter - one or two important topics have been raised…

He goes to pour himself another cup of coffee, scowls at the cafetiere - or his hand - and hastily puts it down again. “But you never knew?” Crowley asks, his voice striving but failing not to sound a little hurt.

Aziraphale dabs at his lips with a napkin and tries not to wince. “I - I believe the phrase is ‘misconstrued the signals’.”

Crowley snorts like he’s just inhaled Crack and Arsenic at the same time. “Call yourself Ethereal?!” he manages, hoping the mounting hysteria he feels is laughter because if it isn’t he’s in trouble. 

The Angel experiences another shift in perspective: it’s not as grand as the skull-into-café-culture of their friendship, but highly significant none the less. Demons give no quarter - if they find weakness, they exploit it - even amongst their own kind. Crowley has Defences - Crowley’s Defences have Defences - and then _trompe l’oell,_ three layers of military grade camo-netting, and a mask over that. Because the Demon has learnt from the best: Humans. Soft, mayfly, squishy, icky, entertaining, resourceful and imaginative Humans. Crowley hides his feelings under insouciance and suavity and style: style over substance, that’s him. Only it isn’t - not at all - he’s all damn substance, and that substance is Feelings. At every opportunity, in every small way he could, the Demon had been showing Aziraphale his feelings since the beginning. And the Principality, so certain of Heaven’s doctrine that Demons couldn’t feel anything positive, indulged in whatever mental gymnastics had been needed to prove Heaven correct.

“I could have done with being a little more perceptive,” he admits, his voice contrite with apology. He likes this new-found intimacy they seem to have fallen into. They have always been easy in one another’s company, but now they are wholly at ease… It makes him bold. “I never asked - what is that?” Aziraphale extends a half uncurled finger towards Crowley’s sigil on his jaw.

Crowley vibrates in the opposite direction at high frequency.

Aziraphale immediately folds his hands in his lap, giving the Demon his space. “You’ve always had it…”

“Not always,” he interjects tensely.

“You’ve had it since I’ve known you.”

Crowley shifts, and although his wings don’t manifest, his body hunches into an attitude suggesting they had and were now curled tightly around him. His angel looks at him, worried but empathetic, and Crowley can’t stand it. “It’s my Fallen Nature, isn’t it?” he says bitterly, wishing his sunglasses were on his face rather than in the bedroom. “Freshly booted out of Heaven, here you go, have something earthly and repulsive to remind you how small you are.” His voice holds a fault line of self-loathing, suggesting he’d never needed the reminder.

“But, one mark…” Aziraphale tries to sooth.

“Cain had a mark,” Crowley mutters darkly, drawing his long legs up onto the sofa so he can wrap his arms around them and rest his chin on his knees.

“It was nothing like that!” the Angel says a little snappishly, uncomfortable that Crowley should equate the two. “If that’s your Fallen Nature,” he presses, “How come it isn’t the same as the - the base creatures the Hierarchy of Hell manifest?”

He gives a wide and sorry smile. “Maybe I’m just not that important?”

Aziraphale is reminded again that he’s been slow on the uptake. He’d spent too long believing Earth was a stage for a cosmic Morality Play, with entrances and exits and lines to spout, costumes to wear, and Plot to move forward. He’d seen Crowley as the Perpetual and Wily Serpent, when in truth he was a Wary Rebel twice over who’d hoped to strike it third time lucky and make the World his home.

Crowley hadn’t been able to stomach Heaven, so had left on an express train to Hell only to be just as disappointed with that destination - if not more so. At least, Aziraphale supposes, when he was Celestial he’d been able to help sculpt the universe… “Do the Fallen Create anything?” he asks.

“Trouble?”

“No! Well yes, but I mean… Didn’t you have a hand in creating the Stars?”

“That was before the Fall,” Crowley cuts across morosely.

“I… I don’t believe I ever met you. In Heaven, I mean.” That in itself wasn’t surprising, Heaven had at the time held 30 million angels. “Were - were you very different?”

“My hair was longer,” he offers facetiously.

“No, I…”

“Round,” he snaps bitterly. “My pupils were round, alright?”

Aziraphale thinks of asking about his Celestial name but wisely concludes that would be a trespass too far.

There is a Human rule, unwritten but widely acknowledged: those who have been through a Crucible may speak of it amongst themselves, but outsiders are not welcome. One inmate of a prison may ask another ‘What you in for then?’ without offense. Soldiers may swap horror stories of atrocities they’ve witnessed or partaken in. But it’s a Members Only club: information like that is too heavy - too damning. It’s not passed to outsiders. That notwithstanding, Aziraphale doesn’t imagine the Hordes of Hell to be the types to discuss the philosophies of personal motivation. So he chances the question.

“Why did you Fall?” he asks quietly.

Crowley’s mouth quirks into a wide and shaky smile. “Asked the wrong questions.”

Crowley often claimed it wasn’t his fault he’d Fallen, that he’d tagged along with Lucifer and his mates out of boredom, before finding himself face-first in a pit of burning sulfur. That wasn’t a lie, _per se,_ but it wasn’t the truth either. Crowley had never fitted neatly amongst the Heavenly Host. He’d always asked too many questions. Lucifer had been an excuse for pettiness, noting more - and by all the Stars in Creation how that had misfired…

Crowley has gone still, his expression studiously blank and his eyes holding a glazed quality. He doesn’t want to remember the shock, the brackish disappointment and that cold feeling in his gut that had flickered back and forth between rage and fear.

Aziraphale reaches out and gently brushes the Demon’s cheek with the back of his knuckles. He's not certain what he means by the gesture other than to offer comfort.

Crowley flinches, his eyes fully serpentine for a moment before he has himself under control again. He gives a shaky sigh and makes an effort to uncoil and sit on the sofa normally.

He didn’t enjoy Heaven; Celestial Harmony grated on his nerves. What grated more as things progressed, was the utter lack of curiosity from the Heavenly Host - the devout acceptance of the status quo no matter what that entailed. It wasn’t as if Earth had been the first...

There had been six not-quite-Earths prior to this one that the Almighty had been dissatisfied with. (Not-Earth 2 had been a jungle - so verdant - green all over… Well, purple-red all over because of where it was in relation to the nearest star, but still. Lush. Nothing but plants. Crowley had liked Not-Earth 2.) After its destruction Crowley had become difficult, like a three year old who’s discovered the question ‘Why?’ and is aware it vexes adults but persists in it anyway out of a perverse and mutinous spite.

It was strongly suggested he should be assigned Field Duty - something to get him out and about. He was packed off to the darkest void and told to make something of it.

“I liked making stars,” he says quietly. “Grabbing bits of raw firmament, teasing light from it, spinning it into shapes and patterns… And the colours!” He brightens. “Colours you wouldn't believe. Infra-black. Sinople. Chalybeus. Ohh, you could do some amazing stuff! Like - like finger-painting the cosmos! Whole spectrum of colours,” he finishes wistfully, in a longing tone no Demon should be capable of, if Heavenly Doctrine was correct.

Aziraphale is feeling a little sore on the topic of Doctrine. No one likes to be lied to - especially not for six millennia. And no one likes to realise that they should have known better and seen the age-old Dogma for what it was.


	12. Chapter 12

Some part of Aziraphale knew he shouldn’t ask - should never ask - and yet the question is burning inside him, yearning to know if Crowley trusts and loves him enough to answer. Heaven had always been short on answers and long on obedience. He is desperately hoping Crowley's Love will prove more demonstrative and open in its character.

“What was your name? Before?”

He looks queasy, but tries to say the Name anyway: the words sticks in his throat - he can’t - he’ll throw up. It's been like that since 3659BC. Eventually in utter frustration he snaps his fingers and a very old and worn 1920s First Edition English translation of the Book of the Dead materialises and falls open at a significant page. He looks at it whilst trying hard not to, and stabs his finger at two images opposite one another on the page as if he was prodding a hot coal.

The Angel peers at the hieroglyphs. “Jheuty-Wadjet…?”

Crowley nods, although it’s a tightening of the jaw and a twist of the mouth suggesting nausea rather than agreement. “It’s where the J comes from!” He tries to smile to share the cosmic joke. 

"In the Garden you introduced yourself as Crawly. And besides, I was under the impression these were local deities. Ah…” He wants to mention that Wadjet is depicted as a goddess, but it seems a scholarly hair to split.

“Yeah, well, hung around the Nile Delta for a while after Eden. Nice place. They didn’t really seem to mind the - this…” he makes a vague gesture which could encompass his sigil or all of him entire. "Crawly wasn't really doing it for me, after the Garden. Thought I'd go old-school - a bunch of us did - returning to Celestial names. I was just trying to annoy Hell."

“How is it then that your name came to represent two separate deities?”

He shrugs bonelessly. “You know how it goes. Give humans a story - or - or a book - they balls it up. Start making up their own interpretations…”

“You didn’t!”

“Wha…?”

“The Book of Thoth. You - you didn’t!”

Crowley scowls at himself and his eyebrows make complicated shapes. “Think I did,” he decides, "though to be fair, I was drunk at the time.”

The Angel frowns: Crowley’s sounding drunk now too, there’s something vast and brittle inhabiting his words that he's trying to pretend isn't there.

“So, is the entirety of the Egyptian pantheon populated by Fallen Angels?”

He blinks. “Not all of it,” he says as if he finds the accusation unreasonable. "Like I said, humans make stuff up."

“Is that why the Plagues were…”

 _“Shut up!”_ he utters in a voice that sounds like paired flesh and broken bones. 

Back in the day, there’d been a small cabal of Demons who’d hung out in Ancient Egypt. Pasht-Sekhmet had originally been sent up on a diabolical murder spree, but had changed her mind after getting black-out drunk in the city of Pi-Rameses. (It would be, she reasoned, seriously rude to eviscerate the locals who’d been buying her drinks all evening.) She sent a suitably blood-filled description of her fictional antics back to Hell, and then another note to a few friends of hers that read, ‘GET UP HERE IT’S FUCKING FANTASTIC YOU LOSERS!’

Nine of her friends, Crowley amongst them, had come up to see what the fuss was about and coincidentally try this new thing she kept raving about called ‘beer’.

There were ten of them in all: Pasht-Sekhmet and Jheuty-Wadjet, the sisters Aset and Neputhet. The brothers Heru-Asir and Sut. Anpu the convivial loner who liked to tag along. Ma’at and Ra-Horakhty who’d assumed parental roles, opting to be the sensible couple of the group along with Ammit, who was the world’s most terrifying vodka aunt - or would be as soon as vodka was invented.

It had been fun - ridiculously, pointlessly fun. Instead of trying to outdo one another in Damning Temptations, they found themselves partaking in elaborate practical jokes - and the biggest joke of all was on Hell. They argued and bickered over who’d started it, but it didn’t matter. The game was to teach the locals something new - something wonderful - if one could. (Even back then, Humanity was no slouch at discovering things for itself.)  

But teaching was only half the trick: then you had to send in a report explaining what you’d done and why it Furthered His Infernal Majesty's Diabolical Cause. They all got rather good at it. Too good at it, it transpired. Word got around.

“There were ten of us in Egypt,” Crowley says blankly. “We were just… we… we just had fun. Drinking. Showing people stuff. Just… hanging out really,” he finishes sadly. “And there’s - ngk - nhh - this one Demon who figured it out.”

“Figured it out?”

“That we’re pissing about - having a holiday! Not really furthering anything Hellish at all. … He asks to join in. Sut and Ma’at both know him, and they say he’s - he’s not…” Crowley is trembling. “They said he's an utter cunt, even by Hell's standards.” He tries to twitch a smile, to lessen the severity of his language but only succeeds in looking queasy. He is rocking back and forth: the movement is there but so slight that ‘wobbling’ might be a better description. 

Aziraphale is not a slouch when it comes to mythology and ancient religions. “You don’t mean Ap…”

“Don’t say his fucking name,” Crowley spits venomously. “Don’t even think it!” 

Aziraphale quiets obediently. He doesn’t think it safe to pry the end of that tale out with further questions, so he waits instead. His patience is eventually rewarded.

“Double agent. Spiteful bastard,” the Demon mutters. “Couldn’t just tell Hell we’d been pissing about. No! He only went and told _your_ lot. Suddenly there’s - there’s the Angelic Host an’ - and a plague for each of us - twisting who we were or what we gave into something monstrous. Trying to make them hate us...” He shivers, but his eyes blaze.

“The Nile became blood: same colour as that damn beer Pasht-Sekhmet loved. They did lice for Neputhet because she cared for the mourning and the dead - made her unclean.” He gave a terrible laugh. “Un-killable wild beasts for Sut - he was a hunter y’know. Invented the spear… Pestilence of livestock for Ra-Horakhty. He said he’d always protect them when they were in his sight. Hard to believe when your livestock’s putrefying under the sun’s glare… Boils for Aset because she’d taught them about beauty. Thunder, hail, and fire for Anpu who’d had the audacity to suggest they might travel. See the world… Locusts for Heru who said he’d watch over them. Ten billion locusts, can’t watch through that!” Crowley makes an odd noise that’s probably supposed to be another laugh, but something in him has completely shut down. “Darkness for three days. That was for Ma’at…” His throat sounds like it’s bleeding misery. He swallows, blinks, and doesn’t elaborate further. “Death of the firstborn… Hell really did a job on Ammit - I’d say they exceeded expectation on that one. They dragged her down to the Pit for a good talking to; she was only meant to be tortured for a millennia. They unfettered her, but she wouldn't leave, just keeps pulling more people in…” he giggles.

A shadow falls across the Angel's eyes: a memory bobs to the surface like an old and bloated corpse. He shakes his head and concentrates on checking his mental arithmetic. He realizes that leaves Crowley with ‘frogs’.

“Wasn’t frogs,” the Demon mumbles as if catching his thoughts. “Was snakes. Obviously.”

Aziraphale isn’t certain what to believe; it all sounds fantastical, even to an Angel who had been there. Were half the Egyptian Pantheon Fallen Angels who were embraced as gods by the early people of Khem? And, given how Fallen Nature manifests, does this explain why the Khemetic Pantheon are all animal-headed? Aziraphale the scholar looks confused, Aziraphale the Angel unhappy. “I - I don’t entirely understand.” 

To be honest, Crowley doesn’t either and he’s had millennia to think it over. “We create stars from the Firmament and you think our presence in the universe doesn’t affect Reality? Huh. You think some poor bastard with nothing more in the world then a goat an’ a stick isn’t gonna worship what we can do?” Crowley snaps his fingers and vanishes the Book of the Dead, then hunches over looking distinctly wan. Before Aziraphale can comment he pushes himself up again, looks at the coffee pot with longing, but remains composed - or composed by the Demon's current lax standards anyway.

“Jheuty-Wadjet,” the Angel murmurs. “So why is Thoth most frequently depicted as an Ibis?”

Crowley strives very hard not to laugh, giggles, chokes, and seems to get a hold of himself again. “Once upon a time, Djeuty-Wadjet was a snake. And - Ap-a…” he tries not to retch. “And that Bastard was the original benu bird - he was the Ibis. Your side returned his feathers for a job well done… We’re Unforgivable, but we can still get Celestial perks.” He looks infinitely sorrowful and very tired. “That’s the point of Punishment, angel - it has to hurt, otherwise how do you know you did wrong?”

Aziraphale is suddenly aware, in a way he hasn’t been previously, of what very thin ice he is traversing.

“All the stories, all the funerary texts, all those amulets. All those tiny petty Miracles - well, spells, well, something - things! - we taught them to invoke for protection. Worked when we were there. Then along comes the Host! And it’s Plagues for all - especially those we tried to help. Most of us could take that kick…” again something in his expression twitches, “but why did it have to be them as well? The - people - Humanity? It was just a stupid game! Inventing things. Why did they have to pay for it?”

Aziraphale wishes he knows what to say to that, but Heaven’s Propaganda has been feeling flimsy for a while now. He tries to imagine how it might feel if his Name had been known to Humans and hailed as a Scholar or Healer only to suddenly be stripped away and his best attributes assigned to his nemesis.

“I’m always what I have been, beneath the skin,” Crowley says sounding defeated. “They loved me there - winged serpent - great! Fan-fucking-tastic! And then after the Plagues it all changes and the serpent’s a cosmic monstrosity to be battled every night so it doesn’t eat the sun. The sun! And now it’s Thoth the teacher, Thoth the poet and healer with the head of a sodding bird!” The mania in him drops, a cold-snap in his mood that could freeze Heaven - or at least would dearly like to try. “Only feathers can be righteous - scales are for the lowly. Heavenly dictate, that,” he nods. 

“You know, Quetzalcoatl…”

“Shut up,” he admonishes miserably.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Book of Thoth appears in a short story from the Ptolemaic period.
> 
> It's a spell book written by Thoth and hidden at the bottom of the Nile, locked inside a series of boxes guarded by serpents. Prince Neferkaptah fought the serpents and stole the book. In punishment for his theft, the gods killed his wife and son. Neferkaptah committed suicide and was entombed along with the book. 
> 
> Generations later, the story's protagonist, Setne, steals the book from the tomb despite opposition from Thoth in the guise of Neferkaptah's ghost. Setne then meets a beautiful woman who seduces him into killing his children and humiliating himself in front of the pharaoh... He then discovers this episode was an illusion created by Thoth to ensure he left the book alone. In fear of further retribution, Setne returns the book to Neferkaptah's tomb.
> 
> I just like the idea of a drunken Crowley pretending to be a ghost and stuff, all the while sluring, "Look, mate - mate! You don't wanna dooo this!"


	13. Chapter 13

“Crowley…” Aziraphale doesn't know what to say. He realises that whilst the discussion of Celestial Names and Falling are all rather academic to an Angel, they are anything but to a Demon. He wonders why if the topics are so painful to Crowley that he speaks of them...

He manifests wings with a hiss that sounds more like self loathing than anger, and furls them around himself. It’s hard to hear through the shield of night-black feathers but Crowley is muttering a string of profanities in an increasingly broken voice.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale tries to venture a hand forwards to push the flight feathers aside. For a moment he is face to face with a pair of glowing serpentine eyes in the velvety darkness…

Then Crowley growls, _“No,”_ at the Angel, before grabbing his longest flight feathers in a death-grip, and folding his wings away.

There is an odd sound like torn silk: Crowley is sitting, a fistful of bloody feathers in each hand. He sways, defiant, and then catches sight of his work. He blinks at the stained pinfeathers and starts to shiver as the shock catches up with him. His breath is coming in hitched little gasps and blood is dripping across his hands and down the feathers mangled in his fists. He looks at Aziraphale. “F-fucking feathers,” he utters, sounding triumphant and confused before pitching forward onto the floor, narrowly avoiding the coffee table.

Aziraphale is not swift enough to catch him; he should have been, but horror has a nasty habit of interfering with reaction time. He is at his side however, and gathering Crowley up into his lap. His eyes feel hot and salt-stained. _“I’m not doing this again,”_ he mumbles. The Demon is in his arms, and the Angel curls over him, rocking gently, seeking to hold him closer as if that can stop the hurt.

There is a phosphor white flicker like a lightning flash and a rustle of heavy silk skirts as Bedlam manifests. Out of all Creation, one Angel and one Demon might know what the other smells like, but she knows the scent of Celestial Insanity and is drawn to it like a bloodhound. She looks at the torn feathers, the unconscious Demon and the distrait Angel who has started to bristle. “Peace,” she says quickly, “Let me see him.”

Aziraphale’s wings unfurl with a violent snap, making the room feel small.

Bedlam considers being polite but decides time is against that. “Give him to me,” she demands.

“No!”

“GIVE HIM TO ME NOW,” the star advises sternly.

Aziraphale looks at her miserably, fearful of where to place his trust.

The star fizzes like potassium burning on pure fury. “THERE IS NO TIME. Now - now or you’ll lose him!”

Aziraphale folds his wings and defenses away and closes his eyes in surrender.

There is a movement of air, a rustle of silk, an irate mutter of, _“Firmament give me strength!”_ and then everything is moved by Airt - or possibly Madness - to somewhere else.

* * *

He opens his eyes and surveys the little stone walled room: it looks like a monk’s cell, only it’s open on one side leading straight through an arched cloister to a garden. The garden is gorgeous and instills a strange sense of tranquility in him as he surveys at it. There is a narrow cot set by the cloisters, angled so it might catch the sunbeams. Bedlam sits by the head of the cot, as stately as a queen in a castle, but stands when the Angel finally looks upon her. Her blue dress is linen now: its sleeves are shorter, its style less fussy, and a wide apron covers her skirts.

He wonders where the Demon is. Aziraphale’s wings twitch to manifest and he wonders if he can summon the Sword of War - or the other one - to his hand. It had been issued to him after all. (The second had gone with the job description and was more of a loan, but neither the title nor Ravager had been officially stripped from him.) Surely he could manage to call one or the other if he had to… He has the uncomfortable sensation of being stared at: his Original Form, his Thoughts, his Hopes, his Being. It’s very disconcerting.

“You don’t need a sword. Come and sit,” she gestures to the three-legged stool by the bed.

Aziraphale does as he’s bid, but stops half way across the room as he catches sight of the occupant of the cot, lying very still beneath a blanket and several black sheepskins. The figure is pale and gaunt with a mane of copper-blood hair any Pre-Raphaelite model would kill for. Crowley looks much younger, and somehow more innocent in his stillness.

“What did you _do?”_

She understands his anguish. “Both less than I ought and far more than I might.” She gives another of her disquieting grins, strange and bright like a crescent moon.

Aziraphale had spent, roughly speaking, four thousand years worrying about Heaven’s reprimands for himself, then a further two worrying about Hell’s reprimands for Crowley. “Whose side are you on?”

“Mine,” she says easily. “I’m on the side of Sanctuary. Reality’s not a bloody chess board. You play like that, everything ends up Broken. Wars don’t tell you who’s right - only who’s left. I don’t want to Keep the universe.”

Aziraphale swallows. He’s never bothered to follow Angelic Purpose to its Ultimate Conclusion. If Bedlam had been created to house Broken things and Heaven and Hell broke Earth or Reality - what then? Would they all be sucked into Sanctuary like light into a black hole? He gives a little shudder. What a truly monstrous thought…

Bedlam makes a noise that aims for contempt, misses, and lands in annoyance. “Neither of you have the sense the Almighty gave you.” She flicks her hands as if ridding them of water and then ‘dries’ them on her apron. “I’ve done what I can. I believe, Angel, the rest is up to you.”

Aziraphale twitches, remembering the last time he Healed Crowley. “I - I’ve done that once already and I…”

“No, you halfwit!” Bedlam sighs. “His wings will heal on their own now they’re no longer bleeding. The feathers will regrow. He didn't hurt himself that badly - it was shock more than anything. Like having your nails pulled out,” she adds brightly.

Aziraphale is aware Bedlam meant that to be reassuring. He shakes his head. “Then I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“He’s…” She glances down at the unconscious Demon. “He had nothing left,” she tries to explain.

“But surely he can sleep and…”

“HE HAD NOTHING - HE WAS SHATTERED,” Bedlam spits, “HE HAD ONLY THE FRAGMENT WE LEFT HIM!”

The Angel works for some moments on trying to decipher that. “Err, what exactly was it t-that you left him?”

Bedlam glowers; for a Being of Peace and Healing she has remarkably little patience. “SANITY,” she hisses, as if it’s obvious for anyone with eyes to see and given how many Eyes an Angelic Being possesses she’d really expected better.

“But - but you said he wasn’t mad…”

“I said no such thing,” she counters primly. "He pulled out his own flight feathers. I'd say he was at least two bus rides and a long cold walk from sanity, wouldn't you?"

Aziraphale stutters but can’t settle on any one word: he’s rendered incomprehensible by the unfairness of it all. Bedlam had warned him of the risk he took at the start, indeed she seemed almost to approve: she’d offered her Blessing and aid - and now this?

She would keep Crowley in Sanctuary, his Essence subsumed and locked away from the rest of Creation. And Aziraphale would never see him again.

The Angel feels tears blaze down his cheeks, hot against his skin. He’d thought she was helping, whereas in truth, Heaven’s Mercy was yet another Betrayal. “Y-you didn’t have to be so cruel,” he manages.

Her eyes narrow: slowly a smile blooms like a bruise across her lips. “You are an incredibly foolish Principality,” she says gently. “I’m not Keeping him."

Hope stutters in Aziraphale’s breast.

She walks forward and takes his hand. Her touch is cool and infects him with a comforting calmness.

“But you said he was broken.” His voice is very small.

“No, I said he was shattered." She had said he was broken, before, but since she'd re-evaluated her opinion she saw no cause to admit she'd been wrong. "Shattered is a surface thing - like ice, all spider-web cracks. But Broken? That’s pieces all over the floor that can’t get put back together." She frowns, wondering how to explain what she's done. "if it's cold enough and you pour water on cracked ice, all the shards heal up in the chill, and you get new ice on top. Sanity's like that." It's not in the least as well she knows, but the explanation will have to do. She grins.

Aziriphale looks back and forth between Crowley and Bedlam, uncertain that he’s understood her, but his heart is growing uncomfortably large in his chest with the sheer possibility of it. Crowley - infuriating, rebellious, unstable, bloody minded serpent that he is - will be alright. The relief makes him giddy.

She laughs, but it’s not unkind. “His mind will heal like his wings. He’ll be alright. But he’s fragile,” she warns. “Over-dramatic bastard. What happened anyway? Last I knew he was drunk as a lord, but stable enough. I leave you alone for five minutes, then all of a sudden he goes off the deep end. What was it?”

Aziraphale does his best not to fidget. “Well, ah, I - we… What do you know about Ancient Egypt?”

Bedlam looks startled, then stares at Crowley as if seeing him for the first time. “MA’AT,” she says followed by a lot of choice swearing in all four languages of Heaven that is vivid enough to turn the Angel’s ears pink.

“I - I say, there really isn’t any need for that language!”

“Oh believe me, Principality, there is,” Bedlam disagrees. “If you knew what I knew you’d swear enough to curl Satan's toes."

“I don’t understand.” Aziraphale is discovering there is a great deal he doesn’t understand or is coming to understand too late; it’s not a comfortable position to constantly find oneself in.

Bedlam is biting her lip. “Let’s say, I have the Keeping of a very old friend of his. He wasn’t happy about it then, don’t imagine he’s any happier now. Touchy topic I should think. Does explain why he went off the rails though.” She sighs and pinches at the bridge of her nose. “If you could maybe leave off Egypt and find a topic of conversation that doesn’t vex him to ruination, I’d be grateful. Shouldn’t be too hard, should it? After all,” she teases, leaning in with a wicked look, “how much of a handful can one Demon be?”

Aziraphale stutters again, uncertain how to answer.

She turns towards the heavy oak door behind them. “You can stay as long as you like - or leave as soon as you fancy once he's awake.”

“Thank you,” the Angel says with great depth of feeling. “How does one - that is to say - if we wish… 

“To go home?” She looks mischievous and shrugs. “Click your heels together three times?”

Aziraphale nods, unsure if she’s being literal. “Right.” He looks over his shoulder at her but can’t quite meet the sun-fire of her eyes. “Yes. Right. Thank you.”

“I’m here if you need me,” she says before opening the door and slipping out on unfathomable errands of her own.


	14. Chapter 14

Aziraphale watches over Crowley and studies him as he sleeps: he seems to be doing it a lot lately. The Demon’s form is different here: his hair is long and lightly curled in a style the Angel hasn’t seen since Mesopotamia. His skin holds a waxy, unhealthy pallor that brings consumptive poets to mind.

Crowley whilst naturally sleeping is very Serpentine: heavy coils of drowsy contentment. Crowley whilst unconscious holds the rigid and deathly attitude of a saint’s effigy.

The Angel closes his eyes and opens his senses, seeking out that hint of snakeskin and whisky, candle smoke and guitar chords that he knows to be Crowley.

He frowns. He can sense it but it feels diminished and far away. Worse, it seems to be getting further away by the second.

* * *

It’s dark and the Darkness is all that there is, heavy, suffocating, cold and silent. No, not entirely silent, he realizes. There’s a small noise that sounds like - like… someone crying? His tongue flickers, tasting the vibrations in the air. They’re that way…

Time doesn’t mean much in the Darkness, so he isn’t certain how long it takes him to reach the source of the weeping. There’s a woman huddled in a filthy linen shift. Her skin’s the colour of cinnamon bark and her hair’s black but sheens blue in the light - or would, if there was any light. Fortunately, Demons have always been able to see well in the dark.

 _“Ma’at?”_ He utters softly, trying not to sound incredulous.

She lifts her head and stares at him in equal disbelief. Her hair is the same magpie blue he remembers, although now it’s no longer pristine but matted into tangled ropes. Her eyes hold the white opalescent gleam of pearls, but they’re red and raw with weeping too.

“Ma’at…” He kneels down in front of her, wanting to offer comfort but uncertain how. He's tempted (ha!) to say this is a dream. He hasn't thought of Egypt in millennia - his angel pokes his nose in, raking it all up - and suddenly here's Ma'at? There is Ineffable and there is downright ridiculous. Still, he has to concede it doesn't really feel like a dream. It feels more like a prison.

“It’s you,” she says, her voice cracked with wonder. And then, “Is it you? 

“Y-yeah, it’s me,” he says trying not to laugh, but he can feel his emotions stretching thin and the laughter is there, wild and inhuman underneath. “What happened?” 

“It went dark,” she says, and something in the smallness of her voice suggests it had been dark for a very _very_ long time. 

“What are you doing here?”

“I - I couldn’t find anyone. I can’t find anyone!”

“You found me,” Crowley reassures with a too-wide smile.

She grabs his hand. “I did?"

“Yeah, sure,” he agrees easily.

Ma’at and Ra-Horakhty hadn’t been any older or younger than the rest of them, they’d just had an iota or two more of sense and style, so had been looked up to and admired by the others. She'd always been wise - serene almost - it doesn't suit her to look so dishevelled. He sits next to her and nudges her shoulder like a cat that knows it’s being annoying and doesn’t care. It takes a while, but at last she makes a rusty sound that might once have been a laugh. Crowley grins, unabashed and unashamed.

She looks at him - proud, idiot, feathered serpent, with a penchant for trouble for trouble’s sake - and feels something like Hope rekindle in the ashes of her heart.

“You - you won’t go, will you?”

“Well not without you,” he counters.

She shakes her head. “It’s all just Darkness.”

 _“Naaaahh!”_ he tells her. “Come on…” he tugs at her hand as he gets to his feet. Persuading her to stand with him is difficult, but vital. Crowley doesn’t know where they are or why - doesn’t know how they got there, nor how they can leave.

But he can Imagine.

And by Hell he will.

* * *

In one of the many stone cells, a woman in a linen shift opens pearlescent eyes for the first time in millennia. “Where… where is this?" 

Bedlam is there in an instant. “Sanctuary.” She offers her a cup of water and helps her to drink. “You’ve been asleep a long time.”

Heaven will tell anyone willing to listen, that Heaven doesn't make mistakes. This is untrue: only the Almighty is so Faultless. The Plague of Darkness had lasted three days in Egypt, but it had been eternal for Ma'at. ('Over-zealous' was noted in memos at the time with many a sad wag of the head.) But still, Plagues, Smiting, what did one expect? And she was only a Demon after all...

“I - I…” The Darkness, and the soul-crushing loneliness it contained is fading like the memory of a nightmare. She frowns and tries to rub her forehead as if that will ease her confusion. A single pitch-black feather falls from her grasp and spins towards the floor.

Bedlam catches it, plucking it from the air, narrowing her eyes as she studies it. “Huh,” she says at last, partly exasperated but wholly amused. "Can't keep out of trouble, can you?"

* * *

Crowley had walked with Ma'at for a very long time, he wasn't sure how long but he knew his feet hurt. When they'd finally found a place in the Darkness that seemed infinitesimally thinner than everywhere else, Crowley had grabbed the other Demon and shoved her through with a bellow of effort. As a plan, he'll admit, it lacked finness.

And now he is alone again, and monstrously tired. He isn’t sure where he is exactly, but he is sure that someone is prodding him with the toe of their boot. He flops onto his back with a groan. The boot returns; it’s not brutal, but it is insistent, suggesting it can keep this behavior up all day, all night, and then some. “Nngh…” Crowley grumbles.

“How am I supposed to safeguard your Sanity if you insist on burning through it like yesterday’s fashion?” The voice is female, young-ish, and supremely angry. She doesn't approve of Demonic souls slipping their Corporeal Forms and flitting about the place. There’s the rustle of heavy fabric and a scent of cloves, laudanum, poppies and petrichor.

He wonders if he can charm his way out of this situation. It would help, he thinks, if he knew what the situation was. It would help more if he could open his eyes or stand, but he is so very damn tired.

The voice swears in Kherubic and then seamlessly continues in the guttural tones of the Hellish accent of Agrace: an unfettered chain of inventive and foul profanity that impresses even Crowley. He must try to remember some of that…

“Get up,” the voice orders.

The ground seems warm and gravity far too pressing.

 _“Get up!”_ the voice demands again. “GET UP YOU IDIOT SNAKE - THIS ISN'T THE PLACE FOR YOU!”

“Nghh?” The voice sounds blazingly furious, but he’s exhausted and he fails to see why it’s their business where he sleeps. (Like a drunk in the gutter, Crowley has the faintest idea that his situation may bring about regret sooner rather than later. But, like every drunk who ever curled up in the gutter, he doesn’t have the wherewithal to go anywhere else.)

“Move! You’ve just torn apart one of the Great Plagues which is fucking peachy but it’s gonna come back on you if you don’t move!”

Crowley scowls imperiously, unable to understand why he has to go anywhere because he’s unable to see, metaphorically speaking, that he’s sprung someone from a trap and is curling up to sleep on the pressure plate.

Bedlam however, can see all too well.

There’s a noise of pure crystalline female frustration, and an eight-pointed star lays burning phosphor hands upon his arm and forcefully drags him elsewhere.

* * *

Ma'at is sitting in a chair and looking out towards the cloister garden at the greenery and the sunlight. She's tired but doesn't trust herself to sleep; there's something about the darkness that terrifies her although she cannot recall why.

The healer in the blue dress storms into her room, kicking open the door so violently that the ironmongery slams into the stone of the wall.

Ma'at flinches. "What...?" The healer has something in her grasp and it takes Ma'at a moment to recognise it as the Original Form of an old friend. Her eyes widen seeming to eclipse her face.

Bedlam understands emotional drama very well, but doesn’t have time for any of it. _“Be silent,”_ she snaps, even through it is she who has presumed and invaded the quiet of an inmate’s cell. She does it only because Crowley's Soul will succumb to a Heavenly Plague if she doesn’t sort out this mess right now...

“Jheuty…” Ma’at utters, staring at the Demon Bedlam has dragged into her room by the scruff of his neck trailing wings and scales and missing feathers. “Don’t hurt him!” 

Crowley appears at first glance to be emanating smoke, but a discerning eye will notice the smoke comes from shadows and adheres to the Demon instead. He’s not manifesting it: it’s drawn to him - and is getting stronger by the second.

“CLOSE YOUR EYES,” Bedlam instructs, because she's not doing a Purification like this twice over thank you very much... And then the room is full of blazing starlight until every single shadow has been burnt out of Existence - this Existence at any rate. 

The star dims. She’s breathing hard with exertion and anger, bloody tears are bleeding at the corners of her eyes and she would very much like a drink now. She blinks the ichor onto her cheeks and looks at the dazed Demon in her grasp; he does not look entirely human but that's because his Corporeal Form is lying insensible in a cot with one worried Angel watching over it. There's a patch of scales that have been burnt off and are now raw and weeping from when she grabbed him in the darkness. "You can bloody well get back to bed - you've done quite enough for one day."  _Fuck the Plagues of Egypt. Fuck Heaven and its complacency and fu-_

A memo drops in the back of her head. It’s from Michael, she knows. Another follows from Uriel and a third from Gabriel. They want to know why a Divine Punishment has been trashed on her front lawn.

She ignores them. 

(It took a while but she discovered nothing pissed off the Bureaucracy of Heaven so much as having its memos ignored. If she replied to the missives at all it was ‘ET PERIBIT’. That or silence had been her reply for the past five millennia once she’d realized they were more scared of her than she was of them. She was a small Celestial nuclear bomb of crazy and no one seemed to know what to do with her. Which was fine, because her job was Sanctuary: not paperwork, not pleasing Michael, not filing requests for Miracles - only Sanctuary, and the Care of those within her Keeping.)

She’s never understood why that’s such a complicated concept for Heaven to grasp.

It had not been within Bedlam's power to Unweave one of the Great Plagues. But once Crowley had slithered in and dragged Ma'at out, Bedlam was finally able to burn it out of existence. She wonders if she could have entered the Darkness and pulled Ma'at out millennia ago. She's very annoyed she didn't think of it, which in turn puts her in the perfect mood to answer Heaven's memos.

* * *

_It has come to our attention that one of the Great Plagues has ceased to be. This was, according to our records, a Punishment enacted upon the Demon Ma’at, who has since the time of Pre-Dynastic Egypt been within your Keeping. Why has the remit of Heaven’s Will been revoked? Why has the Punishment Ceased To Be?_

That is the message sent to Our Lady of Bedlam. 

(Uriel's message is a list of codes that had been contravened, and Gabriel's message says, 'Hey, those Plagues were great, we did some top-notch work there people!')

And for once, Heaven receives a reply.

Michael’s tablet pings and they poke at it distractedly before they realize who the message is from.

WHY DON’T YOU COME AND SEE? Bedlam offers with a joyous sort of spite. YOU CAN STAY. THERE ARE PLENTY OF ROOMS, she reminds the archangel pitilessly.

Michael is aware there are thirty million rooms in Sanctuary in fact: one for every Original Celestial Being, because the Almighty is nothing if not thorough.

Michael’s thoughts skitter away from the idea of being locked in Sanctuary for Eternity. They delete the memo and inform Uriel and Gabriel in a tight voice that the situation has been taken care of.

* * *

Bedlam receives no further Heavenly missives on that subject nor any other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Et Peribit - Latin for 'Then Perish', because Bedlam is done with Heaven's bullshit.


	15. Chapter 15

He is not aware of anything until there is a sound, close by and anxious. 

“Crowley?”

Immediately he’s aware of too much, of pain, ache and tiredness and a million things he doesn’t wish to deal with right now. Possibly not ever. He wishes the River Lethe was a real thing, frankly. He’s not entirely certain what he needs to forget, but he is certain there’s a lot of it. His eyes flicker open to acknowledge his angel, and beyond that the flourishes of gothic stonework that only the Church had been able to afford and used to render holy buildings glorious. “Hi,” he says uncertainly. And then, “Where are we? Doesn’t feel like a church…”

“We’re in Sanctuary." 

He sits up very fast - too fast - damn that hurts. “Where?!”

The Angel presses a palm to his chest, encouraging him to lie down again. “No it - it’s alright - we can leave. We can leave,” he reiterates. “We just, ah… have been given a little time to ourselves.”

Crowley is not reassured. “Time for what?" 

_Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions…_

The Demon looks down at himself. "What in Hell's name am I wearing?"

"I think it's a linen shift," Aziraphale offers helpfully. "Like a nightshirt."

Crowley glowers at it until it obediently turns black. Next he looks around at the vaulted ceiling of the cell, the finely crafted archways and the cloister garden beyond filled with young fruit trees, briar roses, lavender, poppies, ivy, and in one corner a willow. The colours are vivid and the sunlight soft. He turns away from the garden with an effort. “Ergh, I feel like shit,” he mutters and reaches awkwardly to rub the back of one of his shoulders. There is pain there, although it’s hard to gauge where exactly. One of his arms hurts too and is neatly bandaged from wrist to elbow. It feels burnt, which is odd because, well - Demon.

“Do you remember what happened?”

“No, not really. What happened?” 

“Hmm,” hedges Aziraphale miserably. 

“That doesn’t sound good…" 

“What do you remember?”

He considers. He remembers quite a few things: his wings being mutilated for a start. And burning through something - Will perhaps? -  he remembers that. Whisky - there’d been a lot of whisky. And a dark place he had to bring someone out of and Imagine and Imagine and fucking Imagine until it felt as terrible as the Bentley trying to melt around him. (It must have been important, but he can’t remember what he was striving towards or trying to save. Not that Demons save things, obviously, so it must have been a cunning ploy. He can’t recall having ever put himself through that sort of ordeal for a mere ploy, but there’s a first time for everything. Right?) He also remembers being yelled at by a star but that doesn't make any sense...

“Don’t remember much,” he lies because its easier than trying to explain the fragments of memory and feeling that he does recall. He looks at the garden again. “D’you reckon they’d find us here?” he asks, oh so casual. “If they were searching, I mean.” He has the beginnings of a sly look in the cant of his lips and the gleam of his eyes. “It’s not the place you’d normally look, is it? Certainly not a place you can see into,” he adds reasonably. 

“You can’t possibly be suggesting we remain in Sanctuary?”

“Remain? Nah, I never said remain. But maybe just… a long weekend?” The end of one eyebrow quirks up suggestively.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale admonishes, trying to sound firm. “Sanctuary is a sacred place! It’s not a - a - holiday resort!”

The Demon gives a small shrug and wears an expression that says plainly _well, it's never gonna be with that attitude, no!_  

A lot had happened, and most of it had been emotionally jarring and unpleasant. He didn’t like the idea of being locked within Sanctuary, but so long as he’s free to come and go, it is, he admits to himself, a very agreeable place to be. He likes the idea of a picnic in that cloister garden for a start. Aziraphale could set out a tartan blanket that was a hate crime against good taste everywhere and could have tea - maybe scones. And Crowley could lie back on the grass in the sunlight and vex him that (no matter which way round he did it) he’d put the cream and the jam on the scones in the wrong order.

Crowley’s soul felt fragmented. It was all sharp edges and jagged points forced together in too-close proximity, grating upon his nerves. It was an existential migraine in the making. But here everything’s still and possessed of a calmness that soothes the frenetic edges of his mood. It’s relaxing; but there is one thing missing. “Come here, angel…” He doesn’t care if he sounds pathetic - indeed if he does so much the better - Angels were meant to grant succor after all. He untangles a slender arm from beneath the blanket so it might beckon tragically.

Aziraphale makes a small noise and immediately moves closer to catch the bony wrist and hold the proffered hand between both of his.

_(Result!)_

There is something ethereal about Crowley in Sanctuary. The damage to his soul and sanity shows starkly in his form: here he is far too thin, and the skin beneath his eyes is bruised with exhaustion. “’Ziraphale,” he lets a note of desperation slip into his voice. “C-come here - please…” He should feel wicked but all he can feel is the sunlight of the angel’s care and regard blazing sweetly down on him. 

“Crowley…”

“Oh, come here angel!” he says, quite forgetting to sound wan and tragic.

The cot is a narrow one, but in the time it takes for Crowley to yank the Angel down on top of him, the cot has disappeared and they find themselves on the floor, sprawled on a generous pile of sheepskins and blankets.

“Crowley!”

“I didn’t do it!” he protests (and he is, although it may not sound it, telling the truth.)

“You’ll muss my suit!" 

“Muss _you,”_ the Demon counters automatically before catching up with himself. “Er…”

His angel smiles at him, and kisses him on the forehead.

Crowley gives a delighted little shiver. "Do that again," he begs.

"Do what? This?" In anyone else it would have been coquettish, but Aziraphale seems to find it a wonder that one simple gesture, one touch, can be so pleasing.

"Yes," the word is almost a keen.

Aziraphale kisses him a third time, a forth: a brush of lips to either cheekbone.

Crowley shivers again and arches his head back. "You'll be the death of me, angel."

"Don't say things like that!"

He grins. "But what a way to go!"

A little part of Aziraphale's brain is saying stern things about fraternising and how Angels are Ethereal and don't indulge in such rampant displays of affection. Lying next to a Demon in Sanctuary, Aziraphale finds the voice surprisingly easy to ignore. There is a Rightness to this, this acknowledgement of Love, unfettered by Heaven's hypocrisy or the cruelty of Hell. The Angel isn't certain how far they will take this intimacy, if it will progress as Human courtships do. But he finds he doesn't mind: he is content with this tangle of limbs and this delightfully contrary Demon in his grasp. Or at least he is until Crowley reaches both palms to the Angel's face and kisses him with the fervour of a saint at prayer. Aziriphale is startled for a moment, but the feeling is so acutely agreeable he's unable to do anything but fall into it. The kiss ends, as all kisses must; Crowley lays his hands to the side with a curious stretching shudder before sighing and looking at his angel languidly, soaking up Eden's light like a drug.

Aziraphale smiles, but the expression falters as he notices again how thin and worn the Demon looks. “Would you care to take a nap?” Aziraphale asks.

“Here? With you?”

“Yes, my dear.”

For a moment he thinks of grumbling _'Tease!'_ but it doesn't feel right. They are both new to This - whatever This is - and he doesn't want to mess it up with an ill-timed, irreverent comment. Besides, come to think of it, he is bastard tired. "Mm," he agrees vaguely and curls on his side amongst the sheepskins, his left arm reaching across his neck to try to snag on any bit of Aziraphale that is in reach and draw him close.

Aziraphale lies at his back and drapes an arm across the Demon like a shielding wing. The serpent gives a sigh, pushes himself closer, and finally seems to relax.

They stay that way for some time, although what measure of time is hard to say because they lie within the heart of one pissy and Primordial Star who believes in Privacy and also that Time is for other people.

* * *

_There will be time, there will be time_

_To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;_

_There will be time to murder and create,_

_And time for all the works and days of hands_

_That lift and drop a question on your plate;_

_Time for you and time for me,_

_And time yet for a hundred indecisions,_

_And for a hundred visions and revisions,_

_Before the taking of a toast and tea._

* * *

There is a star as large as the sky - larger in fact - it has eight diamond points if you could count them - which you can’t because your eyes will start to weep. It is a multifoliate brilliance that even Heaven turns away from. And, for now, nestled within that diamond blaze are two Angels, one Pristine and one Fallen, but that’s not important. What is important is that they have in the past month prevented the Apocalypse, amongst other things, and deserve a rest.

Bedlam looks upon them with an expression that might be fondness or irritation. She doesn’t snap her fingers - this is her Dominion, she doesn’t need to - but things change none the less: the two Angels and their nest of blankets are now within the cloister garden, curled against one another in the dappled shade of the willow tree.

Ma’at comes hesitantly to stand at her side and looks critically at the two sleeping figures in the garden.

“You disapprove?” Bedlam asks.

Ma’at continues to stare, frowning, and then finally gives a surprised and joyful squeak. (Ma’at had always been very good at seeing the Truth of Things, but some Truths were so large they took time to come in to focus.) She gives a shy smile. “Oh - no - I always thought he deserved to be happy.” Her smile grows.

Bedlam takes her hand. “Let’s leave them to it. Come on…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally meant to be 1000words about how Crowley perceives Aziraphale as sunlight. IDK what happened. Sleep deprivation mostly.
> 
> Should any of you lovelies feel inspired to create anything linked to this work, please @Wraithwitch me on Tumblr because the artistic inferno of Good Omens is the only thing giving me life right now. 
> 
> (PS, feel free to draw Bedlam or the Hell-Hat Egyptian Pantheon too. The list of things I wish I had time to draw from this fic is Very Very Long.)


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ART POST!   
> This is the first time I have ever had art drawn for my stories - I'm so happy!

 

Bedlam, drawn by the lovely i-m-fucking-awesome.tumblr.com/

 

Bedlam in her silk gown by the wonderful takingoffmyshoes.tumblr.com/

 

I love you both so much for drawing my grumpy insanity star!

 


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